I thought the rules went by billing alone unless the producers petition. Seems an odd choice for the producers to petition since she was a sure winner in featured. Can the nominating committee just move people nowadays?
I thought the rules went by billing alone unless the producers petition.
Incorrect. Producers can petition and unless it's egregious the nominations committee usually accepts it. The nominating committee also has the power in cases where the billing on opening night is inconsistent with the actual role and the producers don't petition to unilaterally change an actor's category, which is likely what happened with Kristine Nielsen. There's no getting around it, she's a lead and the nominating committee agreed. If the nominating committee didn't have that power it would be very easy for producers to engineer the system in their favor - even moreso than it is now, bill whatever will give the show the best chance at Tonys even if makes no sense and then don't petition. This rule eliminates that possibility of serious category Freud.
Scratch and claw for every day you're worth!
Make them drag you screaming from life, keep dreaming
You'll live forever here on earth.
If they're gonna let Bertie be considered as Best Actor, they might as well let Nielsen be in the Best Actress slot -- and she has FAR more to do than Bertie.
PS- I would not want to be in Sigourney Weaver's dressing room tonight. Almost the entire cast nominated except for her.
Weaver and Nielsen are incredibly close friends and have been for many years. I'm sure Ms Weaver is nothing but elated that her best friend received her first ever well-deserved Tony nomination.
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body