Kara Young on her record-setting Tony Award win for ‘Purpose’

With her triumph as Best Featured Actress in a Play for the second year in a row, Young is now the first Black performer to win back-to-back Tonys for acting.

Kara Young notched her place in Broadway history by winning the Best Featured Actress in a Play Tony Award for her role in Purpose on Sunday, June 8.

Following her win for the same prize last year for Purlie Victorious, Young is now the first Black performer to win back-to-back acting Tonys. She was also up for the award in 2022 for Clyde’s and 2023 for Cost of Living, making her the first Black performer to get four (and also to get three) consecutive nominations.

“In this world that [is] so divided, theatre is [...] a safe, a sacred space that we have to honor and cherish and it makes us united,” she said in her speech on stage at Radio City Music Hall.

In the press room following her win, she doubled down on that notion, telling reporters theatre is where she finds “love, connection, and purpose.”

That’s true, she added, “whether I have the fortunate honor of being in the play or the fortunate honor of being an audience member [...] In the theatre, nothing else matters but the story.”

In Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Purpose, a topical comedy-drama that won the Tony for Best Play as well as a Pulitzer Prize, Young plays Harlem social worker Aziza. She watches, aghast, as a family’s secrets and lies get exposed.

Being part of the production has sparked an “overwhelming amount of gratitude,” she said, adding that she doesn’t yet “fully understand the gravity” of her history-making situation with this Tony win.

On the other hand, Aziza is a character she comprehends fully. She’s in her bones, in a way: “She's Harlem, born and raised, and so am I.”

Asked what she’d tell her younger self, Young reflected and then shared advice given to her by Elizabeth Rodriguez, a 2011 featured actress Tony nominee for The Motherf--ker with the Hat: “Don’t let anybody clip your wings,” Young said. “We have infinite abilities inside of us.”

Read New York Theatre Guide's interview with Kara Young.

Get Purpose tickets now.

Gillian Russo contributed reporting to this story.

Top image credit: Kara Young delivering her acceptance speech at the 2025 Tony Awards. (Photo courtesy of Getty Images for Tony Awards Productions)
In-article image credit: Young in Purpose on Broadway. (Photo by Marc J. Franklin)