To Kill a Mockingbird's Celia Keenan-Bolger Wins First Tony Award

Hats off to Celia Keenan-Bolger, who has won her first Tony Award! She triumphed in the Best Featured Actress in a Play category for her incredible performance as Scout Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. The win was announced at the Tonys ceremony on June 9 at Radio City Music Hall. The other nominees in the category were Fionnula Flanagan for The Ferryman, Kristine Nielsen for Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus, Julie White for Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus and Ruth Wilson for King Lear. To Kill a Mockingbird is playing at Broadway's Shubert Theatre.

"I have loved the theater since I was five years old growing up in Detroit, Michigan. I grew up in the neighborhood where my grandparents had a cross burned on their front lawn because they were being welcoming to black families," she said in an emotional speech at the podium. "Instead of moving to the suburbs, they raised me and my brother and sister in that same neighborhood."

She went on to thank producer Scott Rudin, scribe Aaron Sorkin, "director Bartlett Sher for making me brave and Harper Lee for making the greatest literary heroine of all time. There is a small army of laborers at the Shubert that make coming to working eight times a week a joy," she continued. "I have the most incredible friends in the whole world, and they take care of me and love me when I'm not winning a Tony Award."

To Kill a Mockingbird marks Keenan-Bolger's first Tony win. She earned nominations for her performances in The Glass Menagerie, Peter and the Starcatcher and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Her other Broadway credits include Les Misérables and The Cherry Orchard.

Many congratulations to Celia Keenan-Bolger on her Tony win! Watch her and Aaron Sorkin discuss the role of Scout Finch below.