Discerning Leading from Featured?

[EugLoven]

Posted: 4/9/06 at 4:49pm

Does anyone know exactly what it takes under the Tony or Drama Desk guidelines that discerns an actor/ess from being in the Best Leading from Best Featured categories?

For example: Norbert Leo Butz was a worthy winner last year. However, I can't help from wondering why Mattew Morrison was nominated in the Best Featured category rather than Leading? In my opinion, had he been, he'd have nabbed the Tony over Butz.

Who or what draws the line between Leading and Featured?

[Yankeefan007]

Posted: 4/9/06 at 4:50pm

Usually, it's above the title names that are leads, below the titles marked "starring" or "also starring" are featured. Others, like Kelli O'Hara and Matt Morrison in Piazza, are decided on a case by case basis. Same way how Joanna Gleason was marked featured in DRS.

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 4/9/06 at 5:22pm

The above-the-title, below-the-title is the basic guideline and the Tony committee relies on, using the billing in the opening night Playbill to make the determination. Producers, however, are free to petition the Tony committee in writing within two weeks of opening night to request that certain actor(s) be considered for categories different than their billing would dictate. If the producers forget to do so, then the category stands (as happened in the Weisslers' office with Joel Grey in Chicago -- his star status demanded above-the-title-billing, but for Tony purposes, Amos is obviously a featured role; they forgot to ask for a change, so Grey had to compete with 5 actors with major Lead roles, so no nomination for him at all that year, and Chuck Cooper got a nice present).

The Tony committee is generally pretty pliable about these things. The season Fortune's Fool was revived on Broadway a few years ago, Alan Bates and Frank Langella both had, for all intents and purposes Lead roles in the show with nearly the same amount of lines and stage time. The producers worried that the two would end up cancelling each other out come Tony time, so, with Langella's assent, they submitted him in the Featured category (his role while very large was less integral to the main core plot, but more of a scene-stealing fop character). The Tony committee bought it, and both Bates and Langella went home with Tonys that year.