Cole Escola, Sam Pinkleton celebrate their ‘Oh, Mary!’ Tony Award wins

Escola won Best Lead Actor in a Play, and Pinkleton Best Direction of a Play, for the critically acclaimed, madcap historical comedy Escola also wrote.

At the 78th Tony Awards on June 8, Cole Escola introduced their play Oh, Mary! by saying, “It began as a stupid question I emailed to myself.”

We should all be so stupid.

Escola went on to win the Tony for Best Actor in a Play, while Sam Pinkleton won for directing the comedy that imagines Mary Todd Lincoln as an alcoholic cabaret-star wannabe. Really. (Escola's driving question was "What if Abraham Lincoln's assassination wasn't so bad for Mary Todd?")

In the Tony Awards press room after their wins, the pair reveled in the evening’s results. “I just feel so happy and excited, and I want to party but I don't drink, so I don't know what that means,” Escola told reporters, adding that writing the Best Play nominee doubled the impact. “It’s so much sweeter that it came from [...] me, you know.”

Pinkleton adored the creative partnerships that came with working on Oh, Mary!, including with Escola (who stars in the show through June 22) and the rest of the company. “This is the most pure creative process [...] I've ever had,” the director said. “It was a real collaboration [...] I just feel like we got everybody's best work and it was fun.”

The winners also shared advice for theatremakers with a dream who are told their vision is silly. Forget that voice and listen to your own, Escola advised.

“Trust that voice that says ‘I think I'm right.’ [...] I think I can do it,’" they said. "It might take 12 years to put the pen to paper, but that voice is right.”

“If you want to do something, do it,” added Pinkleton, who added that he had wanted to work in theatre since he was a kid. His other Broadway credits include choreographing shows including Macbeth and Amélie, A New Musical, and in spring 2026, he's directing a Broadway revival of The Rocky Horror Show.

Escola makes their Broadway debut with Oh, Mary!, and when it came to what to wear to Broadway’s biggest night, Escola knew it had to nod to a theatre legend. The silvery-blue number they wore on stage recreates Bernadette Peters' Tonys dress from 1999, when she won for Annie Get Your Gun.

“When I was thinking about what to wear, that gown came to mind,” Escola said. “And much like all of our ideas for our show, the first idea is the best idea.”

Get Oh, Mary! tickets now.

Gillian Russo contributed reporting for this story.

Top image credit: Cole Escola and Sam Pinkleton accepting their trophies at the 2025 Tony Awards. (Photos courtesy of Getty Images for Tony Awards Productions)
In-article image credit: Escola in Oh, Mary! on Broadway. (Photo by Emilio Madrid)