Pink is hosting the 79th Tony Awards this Sunday, June 7, at Radio City Music Hall in New York, and she is not planning a quiet entrance. The pop star has confirmed a seven-and-a-half minute opening number, multiple costume changes, and at least one stunt, with the possibility of pulling another performer into the action.
"There will be stunts, and not just for me," she told Variety at a press event Tuesday. "I'm hoping to cajole another performer into taking a chance with a stunt, so we'll see!"
The opening number was written by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, the songwriting team behind Dear Evan Hansen, La La Land, and The Greatest Showman. "It's gonna be raucous and wild and ridiculous," Pink said. "There's gonna be like 170 people onstage with me, and I get to be ridiculous and make fun of myself right away, which was my one rule." She added that Amber Ruffin, who wrote Bigfoot, is helping write the full hosting script.
Pink acknowledged that her selection raised some eyebrows, including her own. When she got the call, "I was like, 'Why me? I've never been on Broadway,'" she recalled, "which is probably the collective eye roll that I felt." The answer she received was direct: the producers wanted to grow viewership. "And I was like, 'Great! I have a purpose! I'm your guy!'"
Her Broadway credentials, while not performative, run deeper than her casting might suggest. She grew up attending shows with her mother, an emergency room nurse who saved money each year to take her daughter to a performance, a restaurant, and a new outfit. "It was my favorite night with my mom every year," she told a different interviewer Tuesday. "We saw 'Phantom of the Opera,' 'Les Miz,' 'La Cage aux Folles.' I wanted to be Cosette by the time I was nine. It definitely shaped what I do as Pink."
In an interview with Billboard, she traced her musical theater introduction even further back. "Annie," she said, before breaking into a few bars of "Maybe." "That was my singing lessons song." She added that Whitney Houston first inspired her to take voice lessons, but classical training and musical theater followed. "I did train classically, so I would sing Phantom and then I got into Les Misérables and I just loved it all."
Her daughter, Willow Sage Hart, now attends a performing arts school in New York and is a committed musical theater fan. Pink and Willow regularly listen to Broadway cast recordings at home, according to Billboard.
Pink's music already has a footprint on Broadway. "Raise Your Glass" is featured in Moulin Rouge! The Musical, and "Fuckin' Perfect" appears in & Juliet. But Sunday will mark her first time actually on a Broadway stage.
Beyond the hosting duties, Pink will perform as part of a celebration of Chicago's 30th anniversary on Broadway, joining Queen Latifah and Jesse Tyler Ferguson. "The first thing I had to do was see if my hips worked, and they do… sort of," she told Billboard with a laugh. "It's not something I ever thought I'd do, and now that I'm doing it it's really fun."
The Tony Awards air Sunday, June 7.
