Tony Awards 2024: Jeremy Strong, Daniel Radcliffe among big winners

Succession actor Jeremy Strong has been one of the first winners at the annual Tony Awards for theatre.

Strong, who starred as Kendall Roy, in the feted TV series, landed his first Tony for his role in the revival of Henrik Ibsen’s 1882 political play An Enemy of the People.

The theatre award for best lead actor in a play will sit next to his Emmy, Screen Actors Guild Award and Golden Globe.

The play is about a public-minded doctor in a small town who discovers the water supply for the public spa is contaminated but his efforts to clean up the mess pit his ethics against political cowards.

“This play is a cry from the heart,” he said.

Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe cemented his stage career pivot by winning a featured actor in a musical Tony, his first trophy in five Broadway shows.

He won for the revival of Merrily We Roll Along, the Stephen Sondheim-George Furth musical that goes backward in time.

“This is one of the best experiences of my life,” Radcliffe said, thanking his cast and director. “I will never have it as good again.”

He also thanked his parents for playing Sondheim in the car growing up.

Alicia Keys electrified the Tony Awards ceremony, teaming up with superstar Jay-Z on their hit Empire State of Mind, while theatre history was made for women as Broadway directors and score writers.

Danya Taymor — whose aunt is Julie Taymor, the first woman to win a Tony Award for directing a musical — became the 11th woman to win the award. She helmed The Outsiders, a gritty musical adaptation of the classic American young adult novel.

Shaina Taub, only the second woman in Broadway history to write, compose and star in a Broadway musical, won for best score, following such writers as Cyndi Lauper, Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori.

Taub, the force behind Suffs, had already won for best book earlier in the night.

Her musical is about the heroic final years of the fight to allow women to vote, leading to the passage of the 19th Amendment. Taub told the crowd the score win was for all the loud girls out there: “Go for it,” she urged.

Keys appeared at the piano on the stage of the David H. Koch Theatre in Lincoln Centre as the cast of her semi-autobiographical musical, Hell’s Kitchen, was presenting a medley of songs. She began singing her and Jay-Z’s 2009 smash before leaving the stage to join the rapper on some interior steps to wild applause.

Stereophonic, a play about a Fleetwood Mac-like band recording an album over a turbulent, life-changing year, was leading the Tony count with four, including for director Daniel Aukin and for actor-bassist Will Brill.

Stereophonic went into the night with a leading 13 Tony nominations, tied with Hell’s Kitchen.