Ready, Set, Tony! The Five Nominees for Best Featured Actress in a Musical Are Funny, Fierce and Fabulous

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. Let's rundown the category of Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical.

LILLI COOPER | TOOTSIE
Surrounded by nuts and neurotics in Tootsie, Lilli Cooper is the voice of reason as actress Julie Nichols, who befriends co-star "Dorothy Michaels" (Tony nominee Santino Fontana) in a musical about Juliet’s nurse. Cooper’s grounded performance caught the eye of Tony nominators, who rewarded this second-generation Broadway star with a featured actress nod. (Her dad, the great Chuck Cooper, won a 1997 Tony for The Life.) The creators of Tootsie aimed to make Julie stronger and more independent than the movie version of the character, played by Jessica Lange. "What I was most passionate about was that [Julie] was a lovable, true, multi-dimensional character that we cared about and understood," Cooper said on #LiveAtFive. The actress, who finished high school while in the original cast of Spring Awakening and paused her career to attend Vassar, has jumped with ease from playing Elphaba in Wicked to Sandy Cheeks in SpongeBob SquarePants to Tootsie. “From German teenager to squirrel to a literal witch, all those different kinds of women can be strong, awesome ladies,” she said with a laugh. “I feel very lucky that I can represent that type of woman on stage.”
 

AMBER GRAY | HADESTOWN
If you’re headed to hell, there’s no better companion than Amber Gray as Persephone, the glamorous wife of the god of the underworld in Hadestown. During warm-weather months above ground, Persephone lets loose with a drink or two, "Livin’ It Up On Top," as Gray sings in Anais Mitchell’s roof-raising tune. "You don’t really hear music like that in a piece of theater," the actress observed in a Broadway.com Q&A. After falling in love with the 2010 concept album, she helped develop Hadestown through its 2016 off-Broadway debut, returning for a revised production in Canada, then London and now on Broadway. "There’s a reason I’ve been saying yes to this show on and off for five years," she said. "I really believe in it. I’m happy that people are reacting to it the way I’ve always felt about it." After her Tony nomination was announced, Gray paid special tribute to Hadestown director Rachel Chavkin, who also guided her Broadway debut as Helene in Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812. "Her shows are like athletic events," she said on #LiveAtFive. “"She knows what she can get out of me and sees what I’m capable of before I can."
 

SARAH STILES | TOOTSIE
For a peek inside the mind of a struggling actor, look no further than the lyrics of "What’s Gonna Happen," the side-splitting stream-of-consciousness song perfectly delivered by Sarah Stiles in Tootsie. As Sandy Lester, the insecure would-be girlfriend of Michael Dorsey (Tony nominee Santino Fontana), Stiles performs David Yazbek’s ode to audition panic at such a manic pace, she had to go to physical therapy to unclench her shoulders. "I thought that this role was gonna be a piece of cake because I don’t have a ton of stage time," Stiles said on #LiveAtFive. "But when I am on stage, it is so intense and full-out, there is no time to breathe." Four years after her first Tony nomination for the dark comedy Hand to God, Stiles nabbed one of Tootsie’s 11 Tony nods. "I just started screaming,” she said of being honored alongside Fontana, Lilli Cooper and Andy Grotelueschen. (Don’t miss the awesome “dream ballet” she and Grotelueschen perform in episode eight of her Broadway.com vlog.) "I love this show," Stiles said on opening night. "It gives [audiences] the same feeling the movie did, but we do something totally different. It’s been a wonderful journey."
 

ALI STROKER | OKLAHOMA!
"I live by this motto of turning your limitations into opportunities," says Ali Stroker, the first actor who uses a wheelchair to receive a Tony nomination for her rollicking performance as Ado Annie in Oklahoma! Breaking barriers is nothing new for Stroker: She became the first actor in a wheelchair to graduate from NYU’s Tisch Drama Department and the first to appear on Broadway, in the 2015 revival of Spring Awakening. In a moving episode of Show People, Stroker spoke matter-of-factly about her disability (she was paralyzed from the chest down at age two after an auto accident) and how it is a non-issue in her irresistible portrayal of the girl who "cain’t say no." Growing up, she noted, "I never saw anything about disability and sexuality and relationships. The fact that it is a part of this revival of Oklahoma! is groundbreaking." When a besotted Will Parker sits on Ado Annie’s lap, "We don’t need to talk about it," she said of her chair. "We just see it." Though she needs help navigating life in New York, "At the end of the day, I really love being in a wheelchair," Stroker declared, "because every day and every moment, I am forced to think differently."
 

MARY TESTA | OKAHOMA!
Fans of Mary Testa’s standout comic performances do a double-take when they first hear her dryly witty line readings as Aunt Eller in the Broadway revival of Oklahoma! All traces of broad comedy have been stripped from the cornbread-baking rancher; Testa emphasizes Eller’s shrewd, skeptical side, and there’s not a lot of faux flirting in her exchanges with Curly as he pursues her beloved niece, Laurey. "The older I’m getting, the more stripped bare I want things to be," Testa said on #LiveAtFive. "That’s certainly this show." Until now, Broadway audiences knew this big-voiced actress best for her Tony-nominated performances in On the Town and 42nd Street, as well as Wicked, Xanadu and a roster of off-Broadway shows that earned a special citation from the Drama Desk for her three decades of outstanding work. "The biggest thing I tell young performers is about persisting,"she said. "When people don’t believe in you, believe in yourself and just keep putting one foot in front of the other." Appropriately, her third Tony nomination spotlights a classic character’s strength and simplicity.
 

Photos: Lilli Cooper and Amber Gray photos by Caitlin McNaney for Broadway.com; Sarah Stiles, Ali Stoker and Mary Testa photos by Emilio Madrid-Kuser for Broadway.com | Design: Ryan Casey for Broadway.com