WGA Asks Tony-Nominated Guild Members Not to Attend Tony Awards
The WGA has said they will not picket the event after the Tony Awards agreed to do an unscripted ceremony.
The Writers Guild of America has asked Tony nominees who are WGA members not to attend the Tony Awards on June 11, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.
The WGA recently sent out an email to Tony nominees, who are also guild members, saying that instead of attending, they may pretape acceptance speeches, in case of a win, or ask a non-member to accept the award on their behalf, according to sources familiar with the matter. The WGA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This comes after the Tony Awards Management Committee asked the WGA for a waiver and received a denial. The committee appealed to the Writers Guild once again and did not receive a waiver, but received a promise on May 15 that the WGA would not picket the event, so long as the Tony Awards moved forward with an unscripted ceremony. As previously reported, a script for the ceremony had already been completed before the writers strike began.
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“Responsibility for having to make changes to the format of the 2023 Tony Awards rests squarely on the shoulders of Paramount/CBS and their allies,” the WGA said in a statement May 15. “They continue to refuse to negotiate a fair contract for the writers represented by the WGA.
“As they have stood by us, we stand with our fellow workers on Broadway who are impacted by our strike,” the statement continued.
Playwrights who were also WGA members had lobbied the union to allow the Tony Awards to go forward, according to a report in the New York Times. The union’s ask not to attend the ceremony may have the biggest impact on the writing nominees, but would also impact guild members who are nominees in other categories, including Sara Bareilles, who is nominated in an acting category for her role in Into the Woods.
Lin-Manuel Miranda had been tapped to write a number for the Tony Awards but stopped writing in solidarity with WGA. He is not a WGA member.
The Tony Awards are scheduled to be held at the United Palace theater in Washington Heights.