2019 Wrap-Up: Broadway.com Picks the Best Debuts of the Year

It’s one thing to be in the presence of a Broadway veteran, it’s another thing to witness the beginning of a performer’s rise to stardom. This year was filled with actors who were both new to the Great White Way and who did the most on the stage. We look forward to following the careers of these talented performers.

5. Will Hochman in The Sound Inside
When you’re starring opposite Mary-Louise Parker, you better bring your A game. And Will Hochman did that and then some in The Sound Inside, the two-hander by Adam Rapp where he played a college student looking to Parker’s cancer-stricken writing professor for guidance. The play may be about fiction writing, but Hochman’s talents are all too real.

4. Celia Rose Gooding in Jagged Little Pill
Celia Rose Gooding is a performer that you oughta know about. As Frankie Healy in Jagged Little Pill, Gooding is the moral compass of the show, playing her character with equal parts tenderness and ferocity. In an ensemble cast as strong as the one in Jagged, Gooding is a standout. When Frankie stands up on that stage with her protest signs, we’re right there shouting with her. 

3. Paul Hilton in The Inheritance
In The Inheritance, Paul Hilton plays two roles: real-life author E.M. Forster (the inspiration for the play itself) and Walter, the mentor to Kyle Soller’s Eric Glass. He never changes his suit, but with just a switch of accents and gait, we felt like we were looking at two completely different people. Plus, his delivery of a monologue about a generation lost to AIDS was simply shattering.

2. Heidi Schreck in What the Constitution Means to Me
Heidi Schreck not only wrote What the Constitution Means to Me, she also starred in the play. Her warm and passionate performance made complicated ideas easy to digest: What seemed like an off-the cuff delivery was actually a well-crafted examination of equal rights and civic responsibility. Plus, Schreck performed in front of Ruth Bader Ginsburg like it was no big deal. For that, we stan.

1. Jeremy Pope in Choir Boy
The thrillingly talented Jeremy Pope made his debut as the sensitive Pharus in Choir Boy, and then went on to open in Ain’t Too Proud, where he played the brash Eddie Kendricks. Both showed off his golden vocals and his amazing range as an actor (as evidenced by his Tony nominations for both roles). With such an auspicious start to his career, we ain’t too proud to beg for more of Pope.