by Bradley Snipes
Okay. So. Let me explain.
You know how sometimes you lose your passport in a foreign country and it becomes a situation with a laminated timeline? And then you come home and you think, great, I'm safe, I'm on American soil, nothing else can go wrong? And then you try to fly to New York and the TSA agent looks at you like you just tried to board with a Blockbuster membership card?
Yeah. That was my Thursday morning.
Turns out—I am not making this up—I never actually lost my passport in Vienna. I mean, I did. But I also lost it again. At LAX. With the customs agent. Who apparently kept it because, and I quote the very polite government employee who called me, I appeared "quite inebriated" at the time and "forgot to retrieve my documents."
Guilty. On all counts.
But here's the thing about being a disaster: sometimes your disasters align with someone else's generosity, and suddenly you're on a plane to JFK holding a Third Mezzanine ticket to the 79th Annual Tony Awards like it's the golden ticket to Willy Wonka's gluten-free bakery.
Meadow did that. Meadow, bless his chaotic, brilliant heart, handed me that ticket—$731.80 face value, which I absolutely cannot afford—and said, and I am paraphrasing here, "Go to New York and cover the Tonys. Try not to leave your passport on the airplane."
I didn't. I left it in my other jacket. Which is progress.
I landed at JFK yesterday afternoon still wearing sunglasses and the emotional residue of a panic attack over the Hudson. My seatmate was a woman named Linda who was going to her nephew's bar mitzvah in Syosset. I told her I was covering the Tony Awards. She asked if I knew Hugh Jackman. I said we were "in the same group chat." Linda, if you're reading this, I am so sorry. I am a liar and a fraud and I hope the brisket was good.
By the time I got to Manhattan, the city was already giving me the look — the one that says it has a file on every bad decision I've ever made and considers my outfit Exhibit A. I was wearing a vintage Dior blazer I found in a thrift store in Silver Lake and a pair of boots that have seen things. Good things. Bad things. Mostly sticky things.
I checked into my hotel—"boutique" is a generous term; the shower was in the kitchen, which I respect as an artistic choice—and immediately started getting texts. Well. One text. From a publicist I met at the Disclosure Day party who I am fairly certain thinks my name is Brandon. But she told me there was a "pre-celebration gathering" happening in Midtown and that "talent would be present."
Talent. Would be. Present.
I have never moved faster in my life. I think I blacked out somewhere between 42nd and 50th and woke up holding a vodka soda in a room full of people who have actually been on Broadway.
Listen. I need you to understand something. I was in my element.
This wasn't some Hollywood pool party where everyone's pretending to be casual while their assistant frantically schedules their colonoscopy. This was theater people. Broadway people. People who can belt a high C and then cry about their childhood in the same breath. These are my people. Even though they don't know they're my people. Even though I am, technically, an interloper who got into this room because a publicist with astigmatism thought I was someone else.
The room was at this gorgeous old bar near Radio City—because of course it was, the 79th Annual Tony Awards are Sunday night at Radio City Music Hall, Midtown between 50th and 51st, and the whole neighborhood already feels like it's vibrating with anticipation—and everywhere you looked, someone was either a nominee, a previous winner, or someone who once understudied for a nominee and will absolutely tell you about it unprompted.
I saw Nathan Lane across the room. Nathan Lane. I have never wanted to be a wallflower so badly in my life. He was holding court near the piano, gesturing with both hands, presumably telling a story that was devastating and hilarious in equal measure. I was too far away to hear it. I am choosing to believe it was about me. It wasn't. But let me have this.
John Lithgow was there too. John Lithgow. He's nominated for Giant, which is apparently a play and not, as I first assumed, a documentary about my emotional availability. He looks like a statue that learned to smile. I didn't talk to him. I just stood near a potted fern and radiated respect.
And Daniel Radcliffe—Harry Potter himself—was in the corner looking exactly like someone who has made peace with being Harry Potter and is now just having a lovely time being excellent at theater. He's nominated for Every Brilliant Thing, which, based on my brief conversation with him (I said "hi," he said "hi," I blacked out for forty-five seconds), is a show about lists and joy and surviving. Daniel, if you're reading this: you have kind eyes and I apologize for whatever my face did when you said hi back.
But here's what you need to know about a Tony Awards pre-celebration: everyone is pre-gaming. Hard.
Sunday is the main event. The big show. CBS. The whole thing. And everyone in that room knew that in forty-eight hours they'd either be holding a statuette or a grudge against whoever did. The energy was electric and terrified, like extremely talented deer who all know the headlights are coming but need one more drink first.
I talked to someone from the Ragtime revival who told me, completely unprompted, that they had already written two versions of their acceptance speech and a third version that was just "crying noises." I respect that level of preparation.
Someone from Schmigadoon! told me the backstage rumor is that the orchestra pit for Sunday is so deep they're basically performing from a mineshaft. I don't know if that's true. I don't care. It's theater. Truth is a suggestion.
I met a choreographer who said he was "manifesting" a win for Cats: The Jellicle Ball and then immediately knocked on wood, crossed himself, and spat over his left shoulder, which is the most spiritual thing I've witnessed since finding an unopened tequila in my hotel mini-fridge.
And everywhere, everywhere, people were talking about the tickets. Because you cannot talk about the Tony Awards without talking about the tickets.
Third Mezzanine, where Meadow so graciously placed me, runs $731.80 including fees. Second Mezzanine is $936.60. There's a special offer rate of $495 if you're lucky enough to snag one of the limited discounted seats. Doors close at 6:30 PM. Black tie only. No refunds. No exchanges. Four ticket limit per order. It is, in every sense, the most exclusive, expensive, and emotionally lethal night in American theater.
And I am going. I, Bradley Snipes, who left his passport with a customs agent because I was "quite inebriated," will be sitting in the Third Mezzanine at Radio City Music Hall on Sunday night, watching the 79th Annual Tony Awards in person, surrounded by people who actually belong there.
I have never been more terrified. I have never been more excited. I have never been more me.
At some point in the night—I want to say around eleven, but time becomes theoretical when you're drinking with people who can harmonize—I found myself on the sidewalk outside the bar, sharing a cigarette with someone who claimed to be an understudy for The Rocky Horror Show. I don't know if that was true. What I do know is that he looked at the marquee lights of Broadway and said, "You ever think about how we're all just performing for an audience that left twenty minutes ago?"
And I looked at him, and I looked at the lights, and I thought about how I started this week passport-less, dignity-less, and professionally adrift in West Hollywood. And now I'm in Manhattan. And I'm going to the Tony Awards. And somewhere in this city, Nathan Lane is probably still telling that story, and Daniel Radcliffe is still being kind-eyed, and every single person in that pre-celebration room is going home to panic-memorize their acceptance speeches.
And I realized—this is the job. This is the whole ridiculous, beautiful job. Not the parties. Not the proximity to fame. The showing up. The being there. The writing it down even when you don't feel like you deserve the seat.
Also, I still don't know where my jacket from Vienna is. If anyone finds a vintage Margiela in a sound bath studio near Stephansplatz, please contact this magazine.
See you Sunday from the Third Mezzanine.
Bradley Snipes is Entertainment & Pop Culture Correspondent at IRREVERENT. He is currently "on read" by Timothée Chalamet, technically has two passports, and will be live-tweeting the Tony Awards from altitude.