Ready, Set, Tony! All About the 2019 Tony Award Nominees for Best Leading Actress in a Play

When the Tony Awards telecast begins on Sunday, June 9, 40 nervous and excited actors will take their seats at Radio City Music Hall, hoping to win Broadway’s biggest prize. Throughout the season, Broadway.com has photographed and chatted with the stars at press events, opening nights and visits to our studio. In advance of the 73rd annual Tonys, we’re looking back at all of the season’s nominees. First up: Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play.

ANNETTE BENING | ALL MY SONS
More than three decades separate Annette Bening’s Tony nominations for her Broadway debut as a free-spirited photographer in Coastal Disturbances and her shattering performance as matriarch Kate Keller in All My Sons. Bening kept plenty busy in between, with four Oscar nominations, four kids with Warren Beatty and star turns on L.A. stages in Ibsen and Chekhov, plus a Central Park production of King Lear. "The reason we go to the theater is to be changed," she told Broadway.com at an All My Sons press event. "That’s what we always hope for as performers—to give someone that experience where they think about it afterwards and they’re never quite the same." Her Broadway return in Arthur Miller’s tragedy has been "just a dream," she said on opening night. "I love the play so much. I feel so lucky."
 

LAURA DONNELLY | THE FERRYMAN
Years before her Tony nomination for The Ferryman, Laura Donnelly fell in love with Best Play nominee Jez Butterworth while acting in his ghostly drama The River, first in London (opposite Dominic West) and later on Broadway (opposite Hugh Jackman). She and Butterworth now have two small children, and it’s not a stretch to call The Ferryman their theatrical offspring: The epic family drama was inspired by the story of her uncle, who was murdered by the IRA during the Northern Ireland Troubles. "It is about the human experience of grief and anger and pain and joy," the former Broadway.com Fresh Face said during a fall press event. Donnelly brought all those emotions, plus aching longing, to her role as Caitlin Carney, the young wife whose life is put on hold after her husband goes missing. "It feels like I’m part of something incredibly special," she said on opening night, "and something, frankly, for the ages."
 

JANET McTEER | BERNHARDT/HAMLET
"I’m always a badass," Janet McTeer quipped at a fall press event for Bernhardt/Hamlet, and who could disagree? The six-foot-tall British-born actress won a Tony for her astonishing Broadway debut as Nora in a 1997 revival of A Doll’s House. Since then, she has played Mary Queen of Scots, Marquise de Merteuil, Petruchio (!) and diva actress Sarah Bernhardt (plus Hamlet) on New York stages. Not surprisingly, McTeer thinks big when choosing theater roles. "Ultimately, [Bernhardt/Hamlet] is about how you are supposed to be a powerful woman in the theater," she said, adding on opening night that Bernhardt "was an icon, Hamlet is an icon—the whole thing is iconic in a way one can only aspire to." In McTeer’s case, those aspirations led to a 2019 Best Actress Tony nomination and another triumph for a theatrical badass.
 

ELAINE MAY | THE WAVERLY GALLERY
At 86, Elaine May certainly had no reason to tackle the demanding role of Gladys Green, whose drift toward dementia is both heartbreaking and hilarious in Kenneth Lonergan’s The Waverly Gallery. A two-time Oscar nominee for the screenplays of Primary Colors and Heaven Can Wait, she is revered by lovers of improv comedy for her partnership with Mike Nichols, culminating in the smash Broadway hit An Evening With Mike Nichols and Elaine May in the fall of 1960. May never gives interviews, so we can’t say how she felt about her return to Broadway’s Golden Theatre almost 60 years after her triumph there with Nichols. But co-star Joan Allen spoke for the Waverly Gallery cast during a fall appearance on Show People, calling May "One of the smartest actors I’ve ever met. It’s kind of like a master class every night." A reliable source reports that the enigmatic May will attend the Tony ceremony … so stay tuned.
 

LAURIE METCALF | HILLARY AND CLINTON
A Tony three-peat might seem impossible, but don’t count out Laurie Metcalf. This latter-day queen of Broadway could add a third statue to her collection for Hillary and Clinton after back-to-back wins for Three Tall Women and A Doll’s House, Part 2—and she was nominated the year before that for the thriller Misery! The decision to play an alternate universe version of Hillary Clinton in Lucas Hnath’s play appealed to Metcalf’s taste for surprising audiences. "Everything about it is unexpected," she said on opening night. "We’re not doing impressions; it’s just our interpretation of these characters and whatever the audience brings to supplement that." Win or lose, Metcalf may be on track to garner five Tony nominations in a row: Next April, she’ll be back on the Great White Way matching wits with Eddie Izzard in a new revival of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
 

HEIDI SCHRECK | WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANS TO ME
When Heidi Schreck was a teenager in eastern Washington State, making the rounds of American Legion halls in "this cobalt blue 80s power suit, braces and Madonna hair," she never dreamed that her championship debating skills would lead to 2019 Tony nominations for Best Play and Best Actress. Her smart, funny, oh-so-timely autobiographical piece What the Constitution Means to Me has struck a chord with critics and Broadway theatergoers, much to Schreck’s surprise and delight. "I could never have imagined that this [high school debating] contest would lead to my Broadway debut," she said in a Spring Preview feature. "When I wrote it, I was trying to work out deeply personal questions about our Constitution, about our country and about our responsibilities as Americans. My greatest hope would be that people feel as excited as I do to wrestle with those questions."
 

Photos: Annette Bening, Laura Donnelly, Janet McTeer, Laurie Metcalf and Heidi Schreck photos by Caitlin McNaney for Broadway.com; Elaine May photo by Brigitte Lacombe | Design: Ryan Casey for Broadway.com