By Ron Wynn
NASHVILLE, TN — Jennifer Hudson made history Sunday night at the Tony Awards, achieving something only 16 others in show business history have duplicated: becoming an EGOT winner. She earned a Tony for producing “A Strange Loop.” Hudson added that to previous Emmy, Grammy and Oscar wins, becoming the 17th performer to win all these awards.
She joins a group whose ranks include Rita Moreno, Whoopi Goldberg, John Legend, Mike Nichols, Mel Brooks, Alan Menken and Andrew Lloyd Webber. Her previous wins included the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 2006’s “Dreamgirls,” a pair of Grammys for her self-titled LP in 2009 and “The Color Purple” in 2017, and a Daytime Emmy for being an executive producer of the VR-animated film “Baby Yada.”
Another notable winner was “MJ,” a jukebox musical constructed around Michael Jackson’s music. It received four awards, with Myles Frost winning Best Performance in a Musical for portraying Jackson. Phylicia Rashad won in the Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play category for “Skeleton Crew.” “A Strange Loop,” which billed itself as “The Big, Black & Queer American Musical” also made history for Michael R. Jackson as it won Best Musical. Jackson wrote the play’s book, music and lyrics. He became only the fifth individual to single-handedly write the book, music and lyrics for a Tony winner for best musical since the inception of the category for the Tony Awards in 1949.
A gender-flipped revival of Stephen Sondheim’s classic 1970 musical “Company,” and the new play “The Lehman Trilogy,” each won five awards. Oscar winning actress Ariana DeBose served as host. The 75th Tony Awards were held at Radio City Music Hall in New York, and aired on both CBS-TV (locally WTVF-5) and the Paramount Plus streaming outlet.
A complete list of all Tony winners is available on either Yahoo.com or Variety.com
