“If you see any of her shows, whether it’s the aerial acts or even just the storytelling, you just know it’s a natural fit to have her on any stage.”
Photo: Michele Crowe/CBS via Getty Images
For those who were skeptical of P!nk hosting this year’s Tony Awards, we have only four words in response to your poor judgement: Gitchie gitchie Lesley Manville. What pop’s queen of aerial acrobatics lacks in Broadway experience was more than made up for in her marquee-ready opening number “Leading Lady Marmalade,” which featured an astounding 170 performers across all avenues of the Theater District to serve as a kiss-off to the musicals, plays, and wigs that delighted — and perhaps confused — us. Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, tenured Broadway songwriters and the youngest-ever EGOT winners, as well as recent Academy Award-winning “Golden” architect Mark Sonnenblick, co-wrote the Moulin Rogue!-inspired showstopper for P!nk to sink her garters into, and it was created with the intention of showcasing the 2025-2026 season’s Playbill-filling divas before unfurling into a general celebration of nominee excellence.
Megan Thee Stallion, June Squibb, those Ragtime cuties, and, somehow, Lea Michele all got in on the fun, while Rose Byrne and Nathan Lane were just happy to be taking it all in from the first few rows. Given the scale of a Tonys production and changing availability of certain stars, the three songwriters were rewriting lines up until the ceremony day. They only hope that the number’s perfect execution might convince P!nk to take a break from being one of the world’s best touring artists and give Broadway a go.
Benj and Justin, last week P!nk referred to you two as “buddies” while teasing the ceremony. How did you all become friends and realize you were destined to collaborate on the Tonys?
Benj Pasek: Back in the olden days of The Greatest Showman, after the film and original album came out, there was a follow-up album called The Greatest Showman: Reimagined. P!nk and her kids were fans of the movie. She befriended Michael Gracey, the director, and ended up recording a song called “A Million Dreams” for that album. So we first worked together and got to know her a bit then, but we were huge fans of her work in general. During the pandemic, she reached out to us because Michael ended up directing her documentary. She was like, “I wanna get this team back together and write a song for the documentary.” So we wrote a song with her called “All I Know So Far,” and that ended up being the name of the film. We had never collaborated in person before the Tonys. It was all writing music over Zoom. This was the first time we got to actually sit in the room and work together on something. It felt destined.
I know P!nk joked in her monologue that she wanted to host because her daughter loves musical theater. But what were the motivations she told you about why she accepted this gig, especially as someone not deeply involved in the Broadway community? And how did that inform the writing?
Mark Sonnenblick: We pitched the idea to her, but the whole time she was really aware of, Oh, geez, I haven’t done a show on Broadway. Why am I hosting these awards? She really wanted to make sure that the song and the setup embraced the idea of, Hey, I know it might be strange that I’m here, but I love this community so music and theater means so much to me. It was about celebrating her people and looking ridiculous while doing it. That was always her guiding thing. It made it very easy to start brainstorming other funny ways to do that.
B.P: What she said is true. Willow, her daughter, is a real theater fan. P!nk grew up loving musical theater too. She was in productions when she was a kid and she has a robust knowledge of musical theater songs. She has a really strong bond with her daughter, and this is a way to connect with her daughter. I think that she loves our world, she loves her kid, and she’s an incredibly theatrical performer to begin with. When Justin and I worked with her on “All I Know So Far,” we realized that she has a theatricality to her. If you see any of her shows, whether it’s the aerial acts or even just the storytelling, you just know it’s a natural fit to have her on any stage.
How did the words “leading lady marmalade” materialize?
Justin Paul: We were talking with P!nk about what the concept of the number could be. We pitched it to her as: “Everybody loves you singing this song. It’s in a Broadway show. It’s become a Broadway number now.” But she was worried, Is it too much of a pop song? And we said, “Well, let’s make it as broad to Broadway as possible. Let’s rewrite the whole thing. Let’s make it a celebration of this season.” She was insistent on making sure that it was an inclusive number that brought on all these ensembles and cast members from different shows. So we said we would rewrite it to talk about all those shows and use it as a season recap. There was a version at one point where we were like, I guess we’re gonna rewrite the title “Lady Marmalade.” But that’s the most iconic phrase from the song. So how is there a way to incorporate it?
M.S.: We had to work out if the other word was going to be “Broadway.” If you’re gonna write a parody lyric, a lot of times you at least know what the pun is on the hook. Weird Al Yankovic had it easy with “Amish Paradise.” He thinks of the name first before writing a parody song, but we didn’t have that luxury. So we thought maybe we could do “Broadway Baby Marmalade.” We didn’t immediately get to “Leading Lady Marmalade” until someone said, “gitchie gitchie Laurie Metcalf.” That unlocked everything.
J.P.: We realized we could make it a celebration. There are all these amazing leading ladies in this season, and then we could use it as a celebration of the whole Broadway season. Also you’ve got these incredible, belting divas that could come out.
We got blessed with “gitchie gitchie Lesley Manville,” “gitchie gitchie Carrie Coon,” and “Squibby Squibby Squibby June.” Whose names did you discover have the most musicality to them?
J.P.: We looked at the list of nominees and then we tried to reverse engineer it, but a lot of it was about rhyme. Carrie Coon and Squibby June — you’ve got to figure out that part of it. The Tetris of trying to include every single female nominee was the priority to us. Everybody is mentioned by name somewhere in the number. It becomes a syllable thing too. Because it’s “Gitchie gitchie, da da.” You have those four syllables, so those slots are taken up by the four syllable names. We had Laurie Metcalf first, but then we were like, She should be the pullback, big landing. That’s so funny.
B.P.: The whole chorus had to sing her name in big Broadway style. I mean, it’s Laurie Metcalf. We knew that would sing out well with lots of Broadway vibrato.
M.S.: We knew Christiani Pits couldn’t be in that slot just because of the syllables, right?
B.P.: One of the other breakthroughs on that initial brainstorm was figuring out what we wanted to fit over “voulez-vous coucher avec moi, ce soir?” Trying to find rhymes that could sustain that section was difficult. That led us to the first phrase that we arrived at, which was, “Liberation, Proof, Becky Shaw.” We realized that Becky Shaw had an “awe” rhyme. We were off to the races and trying to fill in things from there to fit that. An original lyric is, “”Hello, hey Joe, you wanna give it a go?” And we were like, Oh my God, that’s perfect for Shoshanna Bean. We can write, Hey, Sho, want to give it a go? We began to put things in place to be able to name check everybody specifically.
M.S.: We got to a place where it seemed fun to try and include a lot of not only women, but other references from the Broadway season in a way that if you don’t know that reference, it’s fine. You move past it. It’s a really fast moving song.
Ariana DeBose’s enduring BAFTAs rap is kind of the strange gold standard of “naming actors and getting everyone to clap at an award show.” Were you consciously riffing on that opening, especially since Ariana appeared later in the show?
J.P.: I guess it’s just out there. It has become part of culture and mimetic culture at this point, so it’s probably slipped into our subconscious. I don’t think we were consciously referencing anything.
B.P.: I’ll also say in a lot of opening numbers for Oscars or Tonys, the idea to name-check has been a time honored tradition for a long time. So our main priority was that people could hear names, shows, and specific jokes, and then we could pan to them and get an audience response to that level of specificity.
M.S.: Neil Patrick Harris’s Tony-hosting moments are iconic. I feel like if there’s any particular shout out to give, he has an intuitive sense of how to connect with an audience. The one I kept going back to, it was less Ariana’s rap, but more the spectacle of what Neil did with “Bigger!” to open the ceremony 13 years ago.
What ideas had to be discarded because some stars didn’t agree to participate or for reasons beyond your control?
B.P.: Oh, there’s lots. But we don’t want to get controversial here.
M.S.: I don’t know if there was anything that we were like, Oh God, we really wish that had made it in. It’s obviously a complicated number with a lot of logistics, seating charts, and rehearsal schedules. A lot of things had to shift around. There were lines that we liked that got dropped. But the initial pitch we gave to the producers, they were like, We love this. Let’s do this.
J.P.: Of course, there were certain people that we wanted to be in the number that couldn’t be for logistical reasons, and certain people that we thought were going to be in the number and then ended up not being able to.
B.P.: But then there were people who we didn’t think would do this and then at the last minute, they were like, Can I be added in? So some people dropped and some people added. This only happens on Broadway.
J.P.: We were rewriting stanzas until that morning to change end rhymes and jokes based on who was available and who wasn’t. P!nk would send us voice memos as she was practicing in the kitchen with Willow being like, Now we need to rearrange this because we need to put this person’s name in this verse. The way that it scans is different from the last one. She was such an amazing trooper. It really felt like we were in an out-of-town tryout where an actor was getting new pages every day and testing new material right up until the performance.
How on earth did you get Lea Michele to belt out “and we don’t do it for the awards”?
B.P.: So much credit to her. She was game from the start. She’s one of the great leading ladies of the season.
M.S.: She was so down. We got word from the Chess team that she was down to be in it and would potentially be excited. We pitched this idea and we were like, “We think this would be cool.” And she ran with it. That’s one of my favorite moments, for sure.
J.P.: It’s that spirit. We were wanting to celebrate, obviously, the Tony nominees as part of the job, but to shout out to the people on tour and shout out to shows that aren’t running anymore. That’s so much a part of what the community is. It was such a gift that everybody was willing to do this. They have two show days and they’re showing up at whatever crazy time in the morning before those two show days to learn the choreography. It’s a crazy lead up, but you want it to feel like a love letter to this singular, only-going-to-happen-once Broadway season. Lea’s moment was a real piece of that.
There’s a moment in the opener where P!nk says she’s “dancing, singing, hoping producers notice.” I know it’s a jokey delivery, but do you consider this an audition of sorts for her to make a Broadway debut? Did she share aspirations?
M.S.: We asked her that. She said, “Right now I love being with my family.”
B.P.: She was like, I want to do it but I’m not sure about the schedule. I have to see. We were certainly riffing on the speculation of if P!nk is coming to Broadway. Is she going to be in a show? We wanted to at least check the box of referencing that rumor and poke at it a little bit.
M.S.: She should be on Broadway.
When you watched the performance back, were there any audience reactions that particularly delighted you?
J.P.: I love Carrie Coon getting to hear her name. Her reaction was great, and I really love Danielle Brooks and Queen Latifah responding to June Squibb saying her lines. You can just tell how delighted they are to sit next to her while she just slays the line about “slaying.”
The number was organized in different parts, and we didn’t do full run-throughs until Sunday morning. That was the first time everybody got to do it, and it didn’t come together fully until that live performance. We were sitting there on the edge of our seats not knowing if everybody would remember their words or when they were going to come in. So getting to witness the whole thing in the theater was such fun, as well as feeling like everybody was appreciating this feat that P!nk pulled off. She genuinely was really, really nervous to do this. It’s a new space for her. And it was exciting to see, to your question, playing it back that the community gave her flowers.
