Alex Newell Makes Tony Awards History with Win: 'You Can Do Anything You Put Your Mind To'

Alex Newell is making history at the 2023 Tony Awards.

On Sunday, Newell became the first performer who identifies as nonbinary to win a Tony as they won the award for best performance by an actor in a featured role in a musical for their scene-stealing performance in Broadway’s original musical Shucked.

“I have wanted this my entire life, and I thank each and every one of you in this room right now," the Glee alum, 30, said as they accepted the award at New York City's United Palace Theatre. "And Mommy, I love you. Thank you for believing in me, thank you for loving me unconditionally, thank you for teaching me what strength is.” 

“To my entire building and cast and crew of Shucked, you are my rock. I love you all. Thank you for seeing me Broadway," Newell, who goes by he/she/they pronouns, continued. "I should not be up here; as a queer, nonbinary, fat, Black little baby from Massachusetts.”

“And to anyone that thinks that they can’t do it, I am going to look you dead in your face [and say] that you can do anything you put your mind to," Newell added as the actor closed their speech.

Newell took home the award for their performance as whiskey distiller Lulu in the original musical from Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally. Also nominated in their category were Newell's Shucked costar Kevin Cahoon, Justin Cooley (Kimberly Akimbo), Kevin Del Aguila (Some Like It Hot) and Jordan Donica (Camelot).

The Shucked star and Some Like It Hot actor J. Harrison Ghee had previously made history in May as the first openly nonbinary actors nominated in the awards’ history.

The Tony Awards, like most major awards shows, separate acting categories into male and female, which meant Newell and the team behind Shucked were given the choice of where to submit them. Newell told Variety back in April that their choice of category — best performance by a featured actor in a musical — reflects their identification with the term "actor."

“When I say I'm an actor, I mean that is my profession, the craft that I studied, the craft that I'm doing,” they said. “Everyone who does acting is an actor. That is genderless."

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“I appreciate that the categories are separate to give cis women, and women in general, an actual fighting chance to win awards in such a male-dominated field,” Newell added at the time. “If we can create that, we can create more lanes for other people who don’t want to stick to those two categories.”

In a joint conversation with Ghee in May, Newell told Time they were going into the Tonys ceremony feeling like they “already won… I created a lane for somebody after me to come and do exceptional [work]. I have created space and created conversation and made the ruckus that needs to create active change.”

Shucked was nominated for nine awards at Sunday night's ceremony, hosted by Ariana DeBose as a unscripted production due to the ongoing Writers Guild of America strike.

The musical is set in the fictional Cobb County, which Entertainment Weekly described in an April review of the show as "an imaginary slice of American heartland populated with the multiracial descendants of pilgrims who fled the strict Puritans and somehow managed to find a plot of farmland uninhabited by Native Americans."

The 76th Tony Awards ceremony, is airing live on CBS and Paramount+.