Story of the Week: Your EGOT Shouldn’t Count If You Signed on Late as a Producer

I’ve noticed a strange phenomenon happening above the title: Celebrity names suddenly appear there as producers when it seems as though a show has a good shot at winning a Tony Award. Last year offered the most glaring example when Ilana Glazer, Jennifer Hudson, Don Cheadle, Mindy Kaling, and RuPaul all joined the ranks of the over 40 producers of A Strange Loop, the obvious frontrunner to win the 2022 Best Musical Tony. The announcement of these producers was made in April, the day before previews began.

As predicted, A Strange Loop won the top award, giving EGOT status to Jennifer Hudson and technically minting shiny new Tonys for all the novice producers on their way. TheaterMania Editor-in-Chief David Gordon predicts that we will see more EGOT hopefuls attempt this trick in the coming years, padding their résumés with Tony Awards by writing big checks to a winning productions. There’s just one problem…

It shouldn’t count.

Story of the Week will explain how this practice came about and argue why it’s the cheater’s shortcut to EGOT. But first, some basics:

What on earth is EGOT? 

 The acronym stands for “Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony” and it is reserved for winners of all four of those major awards. It is the highest order of chivalry in entertainment, bestowed on such luminaries as Rita Moreno, Alan Menken, and Robert Lopez. The distinction is particularly friendly to composers who tend to work across media (we’ll be seeing you soon Lin-Manuel Miranda).

There are officially 18 EGOT winners, 24 if you count “non-competitive” award winners like Liza Minnelli (Grammy Legend Award) and James Earl Jones (honorary Oscar). And their numbers seem to be swelling at an increasingly rapid pace: 15 of those 24 became EGOTs in this century, 10 in the last decade.

And how many of those are Broadway producers?

Quite a few. Whoopi Goldberg received the T in her EGOT in 2002 as a producer of Thoroughly Modern Millie, although she has regularly appeared onstage (Xanadu, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and two solo shows) before and since.

John Legend won his T for producing (“in association”) the 2017 Tony Award-winning revival of August Wilson’s Jitney, and without ever stepping foot in front of a Broadway audience.  We hope that changes soon, because we know he can sing.

The years from 2019 to 2023 marked an extraordinary period for Hollywood producer-director Frank Marshall: After winning an Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Oscar in 2019, he went on to win a Tony (as part of the Strange Loop battalion) in 2022, a Grammy in 2023, and that same year, a Sports Emmy (perhaps Barstool is better equipped to tackle that particular road to EGOT). His cultural contributions don’t quite seem on par with those of Richard Rodgers, who became the first EGOT in 1962 for (E) Winston Churchill: The Valiant Years, (G) The Sound of Music cast album, (O) “It Might as Well Be Spring” from State Fair, and (T) South Pacific, The King and I, and No Strings.

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And then there are the brazen EGOT-hunters: Real Housewives of Atlanta star Kandi Burruss and her husband, Todd Tucker, signed on as producers of The Piano Lesson last season, perhaps in hopes of securing that precious T. They have made no secret of their quest for EGOT, with Kandi telling The Daily Dish in 2022, “My overall dream is that I get the EGOT…I produced a Broadway show last year, which I am praying and hoping that they may recognize us for this upcoming Tony season. And I’m still looking at other shows to produce.” Sadly for them, The Piano Lesson lost the Best Revival of a Play Tony to Topdog/Underdog, but don’t count the Burri out: They recently joined the producing team of the Broadway-bound revival of The Wiz.

With the exploding population of producers on Broadway, it’s never been easier to win a Tony Award and get 25 percent of the way to EGOT.

But don’t producers deserve to win Tony Awards for their work?  

 Absolutely…for their work. The producer is the lynchpin of any Broadway production, balancing the books and the needs of difficult creatives while keeping investors happy. Say what you will of infamous office equipment terrorist Scott Rudin, but no one can argue that he doesn’t deserve his EGOT (for He Makes Me Feel Like Dancin’, The Book of Mormon cast recording, No Country for Old Men, and 18 separate Tony-winning Broadway shows).

But it’s an open secret that, for many Broadway shows, producer credits are for sale. Speaking to the New York Times in 2014, just months after A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder clinched the Best Musical Tony, lead producer Joey Parnes admitted to offering above-the-title billing to investors who put in as little as $35,000. This number surely goes up and down depending on the cost of the production and its desperation for cash. But it is an incontrovertible truth that you can be billed as a “producer” on a Broadway show without ever offering any creative input — and most lead producers prefer that you don’t.

For an additional $2,500 (as of 2013), these producers can purchase their own Tony medallions to display on the mantle, a lucrative little side hustle for the Awards. One wonders to what price inflation will eventually push this diploma from Broadway U.

Not every show crowds the title page with investors: This year’s Tony-winning Best Musical features exactly seven above-the-title producers (David Stone, Atlantic Theater Company, James L. Nederlander, LaChanze, John Gore, Patrick Catullo, and Aaron Glick), all Broadway mainstays.

I have no issue with producers who actually produce taking that title. It’s a skill like singing, dancing, and acting — one that is incredibly difficult to master and worthy of a Tony Award when done well. EGOT is meant to recognize extraordinary talent, and producing should be included in that. But if your talent is the ability to write a large check, it shouldn’t really be considered in the same league.

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So what do you propose?  

 I propose that if Mariah Carey wants a Tony Award, she should come to Broadway and perform eight times a week for it. The same goes for every talented individual who aspires to EGOT. Signing on late as a producer is a shortcut to Tony that will only result in the award meaning less in the future: Like Twitter’s blue check, it loses value once it becomes just another thing you can buy.

And for those celebrity producers who protest that they are simply lending their financial support to shows they care about, the success of those shows (and any share of the profits after recoupment) should be reward enough. No Tony necessary.

Obviously, no one can stop a wealthy individual from cutting a big check to a winning show and securing a Tony Award. But in the future, when we speak of EGOT recipients, some of the names on that ever-expanding roster ought to have an asterisk explaining how they got their Tonys.