Kara Young has won the 2025 Tony for Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play at the 78th Annual Tony Awards, making her the first Black actor to ever win Back-to-Back Tony Awards. Young won a Tony last year for Purlie Victorious.
As Young entered the Press Room, which exploded into screaming cheers and a standing ovation upon her entrance, her Purpose playwright, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, won the Tony Award for Best Play. As she realized what was happening, Young burst into tears, sprinting toward the monitor as a member of the press corps handed off their in-ear monitor to ensure that Young could hear the speech Jacobs-Jenkins delivered.
After several more rounds of ebullient cheers, Young took to the winners platform, declaring that it was "anointed, ancestral power" at work. When asked to reflect on where she finds love, connection, and purpose in the industry today, she had the following wisdom to impart.
"Where I go to feel love, connection, and purpose is the theatre. Whether I have the fortunate honor of being in a play, or the fortunate honor of being an audience member. We are so divided out here in the world, but that we can literally sit in a theatre, where nothing else matters but the story and our heartbeats and our listening ears... I feel so grateful and an overwhelming amount of gratitude for it. I don't think I really fully understand the gravity of [my historic win], but I feel grateful to be doing this every day. Even on Monday's! Monday is the dark day, as they say, in theatre, but there is still something about being an actor, you're still committed to the story on the dark days. I'm grateful. I'm grateful. I'm grateful."
When looking toward the community at large, Young had an additional message to impart. "Elizabeth Rodriguez told me one time, 'Don't let anybody clip your wings.' We all have infinite abilities inside of us. Every day is a new expansion upon ourselves. It's all life lessons, and all the things that have happened to me thus far have been a part of the journey... Diversity equals humanity. When I look out on a theatre audience, or even this room, I see so much diversity, in every way. And if in my being up here, I help one person, if I can help change the world a little bit, one person at a time... that is my deepest connection, encouraging people to fly because of Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins' powerful writing, because of Ossie Davis, because of Lynn Nottage, because of all of these incredible playwrights that do the impossible, and take audiences into world they may not have known existed alongside them. They're anointed by the spirits, and to get to inhabit their characters makes me so incredibly grateful. I love you, I love you, I love you." Young's previous Broadway credits include Purlie Victorious by Ossie Davis and Clyde's by Lynn Nottage (her first Tony nomination).
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