Hunter Arnold and his colleagues at Hadestown. Photo: Emilio Madrid
It’s Monday morning, the day after the 2023 Tony Awards, and somehow Broadway producer Hunter Arnold is more awake and energized than I am.
“I don’t sleep,” Arnold tells me over zoom.
Sitting in front of a full bar cart in his living room, he points to the liquor and tells me, “that’s my sleep,” as he begins to paint a vivid picture of the night prior.
“It was just a zoo the whole time, it was like 95 degrees, and by the end of the show inside the theater everybody was dripping sweat,” he says. “It was a bit of an evening.”
The 76th Tony Awards ceremony was a bit of an evening, taking place for the first time at the United Palace in Washington Heights and running completely unscripted due to the ongoing Writers Guild of America strike.
It was also an historic evening, in the fact that J. Harrison Ghee and Alex Newell became the first openly nonbinary actors to win Tonys.
Arnold helped produce Some Like it Hot, the musical which Ghee starred in, as well as the Best Play-winner, Leopoldstadt.
“It was one of those years where you didn’t even care if you lost, because it was very meritorious, and that’s not always the case,” he tells me. “It was a pretty unpolitical year.”
Arnold dives into an example, an industry luncheon from before the Tonys organized to celebrate the success of Some Like it Hot.
Co-star Christian Borle, who attended the luncheon and was up for the same award as J. Harrison Ghee, kept telling Tony voters that he didn’t want their vote.
“I just want you to know from my mouth, I know that J.’s role and J.’s performance are better than mine. Vote for him, he’s the one. I’ve been there, I’ve done it. He’s the future,” Arnold remembers Borle saying to multiple people.
For Arnold, who’s produced past winners like Kinky Boots, Dear…
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