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The 2017 Tony Awards have had an unusual component of drama of their own. As of yesterday, less than two months from the CBS telecast on June 11, the ceremony still hadn't announced a host. Tina Fey was reportedly interested but ultimately proved unavailable. Hugh Jackman is filming The Greatest Showman, and Lin-Manuel Miranda is filming Mary Poppins. Perhaps the most obvious choice, Stephen Colbert, a devoted musical-theater fan who tapes his show in a Broadway theater, was already set to host this Emmys. So who would step in to save the day?
Surprise! The host of the 2017 Tony Awards will be Kevin Spacey: a solid, classy crossover-theater-person choice in the tradition of Angela Lansbury, who memorably hosted the awards in the late 1980s. The choice is not as out-of-left-field as it may seem to those who know the actor mainly from his work on House of Cards or from his film career, which netted him two Oscars in the 1990s. Spacey is a superb theater actor with a long history on the Great White Way. He made his Broadway debut in 1982, playing Liv Ullman's dying son in Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts. He was the dissolute James Tyrone Jr. in a 1986 revival of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night (starring Jack Lemmon), and returned to play the same character in a 2007 revival of O'Neill's sequel, A Moon for the Misbegotten; in between, he won a 1991 Tony for Neil Simon's Lost in Yonkers and anchored a 1999 revival of The Iceman Cometh. For 12 years, starting in 2003, he served as the artistic director of London's venerable Old Vic Theatre Company.
Spacey is charming, elegant and, when he wants to be, funny as hell, which should serve him nicely. Oh, and in case it comes in handy: He can sing.
RECOMMENDED: Time Out's complete guide to the 2017 Tony Awards