Ready, Set, Tony! Spotlight on the Category of Best Performance by a Featured 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. Today we're digging into the category of Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play.

FIONNULA FLANAGAN | THE FERRYMAN
When Fionnula Flanagan speaks in The Ferryman, everyone on stage rushes to her side. As the aptly nicknamed Aunt Maggie Faraway, Flanagan spends most of the play sitting silently in a wheelchair, the embodiment of the theme of "vanishing" during the Northern Ireland Troubles. But when Aunt Maggie comes to life, the young daughters of the Carney clan ply her with questions about family history and visions of the future. It’s an unusual role that requires tremendous focus, and Flanagan, who returns to the Tonys after a 1974 nomination for Ulysses in Nighttown, delivers the play’s heightened, poetic language with ease. "I think people identify with it because all families are pretty much the same," the Dublin-born actress said of The Ferryman on opening night. "You have loyalty, deception, secrets, all of that. I would hope [audiences] walk away talking about a sense of family."
 

CELIA KEENAN-BOLGER | TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
Scout Finch is the beating heart of To Kill a Mockingbird, and Celia Keenan-Bolger’s luminous performance captures every nuance of Harper Lee’s iconic young heroine. Keenan-Bolger’s three previous Tony-nominated roles previewed elements of her current triumph: the sweetness of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee’s Olive; the pluck of Peter and the Starcatcher’s Molly; the innocence of The Glass Menagerie’s Laura. "They all have some sort of backbone," she said of her characters during a recent Broadway.com photo shoot. Add in Keenan-Bolger’s real-life warmth and passion for social justice, and the youngest Finch leaps to life on Broadway. Swapping Scout’s overalls for a red ball gown during her glam shoot at Morgan Library, Keenan-Bolger said of her fourth Tony nod, "There is something so amazing about having wanted to do this for so long—and the fact that it really has exceeded whatever expectations I could have imagined."
 

KRISTINE NIELSEN | GARY: A SEQUEL TO TITUS ANDRONICUS
With a week to go before previews, Kristine Nielsen made an extraordinary leap from one leading role to an even bigger one in Taylor Mac’s Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus. Nielsen replaced an injured Andrea Martin as a long-suffering servant charged with cleaning up after a bloody massacre. (Fellow nominee Julie White stepped in to play Nielsen’s previous role.) Mac’s raunchy satire is "a reflection of the chaos and the fears that we’re all beginning to face," Nielsen said on opening night. Her comedic expertise, previously on display in a Tony-nominated performance in Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, plus Present Laughter, You Can’t Take It With You and many more plays on and off-Broadway, stood her in good stead in a production featuring a kick line of naked corpses. "Every night it’s like working with an animal," she quipped during a joint interview with White. "It’s a new, wonderful experience."
 

JULIE WHITE | GARY: A SEQUEL TO TITUS ANDRONICUS
Imagine being tapped for a starring role in the premiere of a three-character comedy one week before the play’s first preview on Broadway. Few actors would dare accept the challenge, but Julie White had the chops not only to master the role of a Shakespearean-inspired nurse in Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus, but to receive a Tony nomination for Taylor Mac’s farcical play. White’s versatility is evident in her 2015 Tony nod for the dramedy Airline Highway and 2007 Best Actress Tony win for her tour-de-force comic turn as the ultimate Hollywood agent in The Little Dog Laughed. "The language is incredible," she said of Gary in a double interview with Nielsen after the 2019 Tony nominations were announced. "It’s also just a bunch of clowning. It’s all in there: the humor, the highbrow and the low. And, you know, fart jokes. All the guts are there."
 

RUTH WILSON | KING LEAR
Director Sam Gold deserves a round of applause for casting Ruth Wilson in the dual roles of Cordelia and the Fool in King Lear. As fans of Showtime’s The Affair and BBC’s Luther know, Wilson exudes strength and smarts, qualities needed both as Lear’s truth-telling youngest daughter and as the helpmate who weathers a storm alongside the addled king. The British-born actress’s London stage credits include Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire and the title roles in Anna Christie and Hedda Gabler, big parts that prepared her to share the stage with Tony winner Glenda Jackson. The Broadway revival’s gender-bending casting tickled the Tony nominee (previously nominated in 2015 for Constellations), who said on opening night, "Every scene feels different and fresh because an actor’s bringing something really unique to it." In a feature on the sisters in King Lear, she added, "It might change the dynamic for the audience—it’ll certainly make them think about other things while they watch the play."
 

Photos: Fionnula Flanagan, Celia Keenan-Bolger, Julie White and Ruth Wilson photos by Caitlin McNaney for Broadway.com; Kristine Nielsen photo by Emilio Madrid-Kuser for Broadway.com | Design: Ryan Casey for Broadway.com