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Bill Cobbs, the convincing character actor who had pivotal turns in such films as The Hudsucker Proxy, Sunshine State and Night at the Museum, has died. He was 90.

Cobbs died Tuesday night at his home in Riverside, his publicist, Chuck I. Jones, told TMZ.

A native of Cleveland who excelled at comedy as well as drama, Cobbs portrayed Whitney Houston’s manager in The Bodyguard (1992), the older brother of Medgar Evers in Rob Reiner’s Ghosts of Mississippi (1996), a jazz pianist in Tom Hanks’ That Thing You Do! (1996) and the Master Tinker, builder of the Tin Woodsman, in Sam Raimi’s Oz the Great and Powerful (2013).

He also played the wise coach who put a basketball-playing dog into the Timberwolves lineup in Air Bud (1997).

On television, Cobbs stood out as the sardonic bartender The Dutchman on the Dabney Coleman-starring The Slap Maxwell Story, the bus driver Tony on The Drew Carey Show,...

No awards show makes it to the end without a few surprises, and tonight’s Tony Awards on CBS had a whopper: It went off without a hitch.

The Pluto TV pre-show, not so much. But more on that in a bit.

With Ariana DeBose returning to host for the third time, the 77th Annual Tonys was like a how-to for awards shows, with nearly all of the performances by the Best Musical nominees (and the year’s Best Play winner Stereophonic) showcasing each production at its best. (Which one fell a bit short? Read on.)

DeBose kicked things off with a made-for-the-show musical number, sounding terrific even if a performance from one of the actual Broadway shows might have been a wiser option. DeBose has said this will be her final Tony hosting gig, at least for a while, and she’ll be missed: She knows how to hold the spotlight,...

With important discussions raised recently about whether (and which) new categories should be added to the Tony Awards competition — Hair, Wig & Makeup? Casting? Ensemble? Projections? — allow me an unimportant one: Best Coin Toss, because that’s what so many predictors will rely on for a season crammed with excellent nominees.

Sarah Paulson or Jessica Lange? Coin toss. Appropriate? Purlie Victorious? An Enemy of the People? Coin toss, coin toss, coin toss. Five cast members of Stereophonic? Get plenty of change.

But Tony predictions are as much a part of the annual Broadway tradition as red carpets and go-for-broke musical numbers. So with that in mind, I’ll get on with the coins, the hair-splitting and more than a few passionate opinions. Here is Deadline’s annual roster of predictions for the 2024 Tony Awards, airing this Sunday evening on CBS.

Best Play

Will win: Stereophonic

Should win: Stereophonic

The cast of...

According to the combined predictions of Gold Derby users as of this writing, “Appropriate” is the frontrunner to win Best Play Revival at this year’s Tony Awards with 27/20 odds. In second place is “Purlie Victorious,” which has 43/20 odds. Our odds are also currently predicting both shows to win two acting awards. So could Best Play Revival be a closer race than people think? It’s worth noting that “Purlie’s” director is on a winning streak that we mustn’t ignore.

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Looking at our forecasts across all races, “Appropriate” is the frontrunner for Best Actress in a Play (Sarah Paulson), Best Featured Actor in a Play (Corey Stoll) and Best Scenic Design of a Play. “Purlie Victorious” is the frontrunner for Best Actor in a Play (Leslie Odom Jr.) and Best Featured Actress in a Play (Kara Young). The...

On Wednesday, May 29, ABC’s GMA3: What You Need to Know welcomes actor Leslie Odom Jr., The Washington Post’s personal finance columnist Michelle Singletary, and Blueland CEO Sarah Paiji Yoo to the show. Leslie Odom Jr., a Tony Award-winning actor, joins the show to discuss his role in the Broadway revival of Ossie Davis’ “Purlie […]

GMA3: What You Need to Know: Leslie Odom Jr.

When the Tony Award nominations dust settled “Hell’s Kitchen” and “Stereophonic” received the most nominations with 13 each, followed by “The Outsiders” with 12, followed by the revivals of “Cabaret” with nine and “Appropriate” earning eight. Oscar-winner Ariana DeBose returns as host of the third consecutive year of the Tony Awards which CBS and Pluto will telecast June 16th from Lincoln Center.

How well to you know your Tony history? Here are some fun facts about the latest crop of nominees.

The revival of Stephen Sondheim’s 1981 musical “Merrily We Roll Along” earned seven nominations including best revival of a musical, best performance by an actor in a musical for Jonathan Groff, featured actor for Daniel Radcliffe, featured actress for Lindsay Mendez and best director for Maria Friedman (her sister Sonia Friedman is nominated for outstanding play for “Stereophonic”). The troubled original production of “Merrily We Roll Along’ only received a Tony nomination for original score.

The 2023-2024 Broadway season that kicked off last June with the opening of “Grey House” featured 36 productions of new and revived musicals and plays. This staggeringly crowded year – especially this spring with its 19 openings in March and April alone – means that the nominations for the 77th Tony Awards will likely be as unpredictable as ever, so review our official racetrack odds in the top 17 of 26 categories. The nominations will be announced on the morning of April 30 by Tony winners Jesse Tyler Ferguson (“Take Me Out”) and Renée Elise Goldsberry (“Hamilton”).

These official odds for the 77th Tonys are derived from the predictions of our Experts, Editors, Top 24 Users, All-Star Top 24 and all our Users, who make up the largest and often savviest bloc of predictors.

Below, see our 2024 Tony Awards predictions in 17 of the 26 categories. Make or edit your predictions before the nominations are unveiled on April 30.

Musicals

Best Musical...

Perhaps no single theatrical image sums up Broadway’s 2023 more effectively than Jessica Chastain’s Nora leaving her dreary, unfulfilled doll house life to exit directly into the unlimited possibilities of an honest-to-god New York City street.

Unless maybe it’s that huge tree that sprouts up smack dab in the middle of an abandoned Southern plantation home after the Appropriate cast has left the stage, a gut-punch reminder that the sins of a nation’s past don’t just wither away because we don’t want to see them.

Or maybe it was Leslie Odom Jr. delivering that eulogy-coda in Purlie Victorious, blessing his “Africanic brothers” — and the audience — with the words “Now may the Constitution of the United States go with you; the Declaration of Independence stand by you; the Bill of Rights protect you; and the State Commission Against Discrimination keep the eyes of the law upon you,...

“Segregation is a ridiculous institution and it makes decent people do ridiculous things,” playwright, actor-director, and activist Ossie Davis told the New York Times on September 24, 1961, four days before his play Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch opened on Broadway, co-starring himself and his wife, Ruby Dee. “Maybe if they can be made to laugh at it they can see how absurd it is.”

Especially on a Great White Way where actors played predominantly to white audiences that had seen few comedies by Black playwrights, let alone satires on segregation, Purlie Victorious must have been a jolting event. Though the play, which ran for nearly eight months on Broadway, begat a film adaptation in 1963 (Gone Are the Days!) and the successful musical Purlie in 1970, Davis’s comedy about an aggrieved “self-made minister” righteously “disembezzling” a racist plantation owner has largely faded from popular memory.

Opening one day...

Merrily We Roll Along, the new Broadway revival of the Sondheim classic musical starring Daniel Radcliffe, Jonathan Groff and Lindsay Mendez, broke the six-performance house record at the Hudson Theatre with a $1.3 million gross in its first week of previews.

Filling every seat in the venue, the revival carried an eye-popping average ticket price of $225.07, besting the $166.11 of the usual frontrunner Hamilton by a wide margin for the week ending September 24.

Merrily, the Off Broadway transfer from New York Theatre Workshop, grossed, to be exact, $1,304,508 for its first six Broadway previews, breaking the previous six-performance week record of $1.18 million set by David Byrne’s American Utopia. Merrily opens on October 10.

Directed by Maria Friedman, Merrily We Roll Along features music & lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, a book by George Furth, and is based on the original play by George S. Kaufman & Moss Hart. Spanning three decades in the entertainment business, Merrily...

The previously announced Broadway revival of the Ossie Davis comedy Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch starring Leslie Odom, Jr. will begin previews on Thursday, September 7, at The Music Box Theatre, with an opening date to be announced.

The preview date was announced today, along with complete casting details. In addition to Odom, the revival will star Vanessa Bell Calloway, Billy Eugene Jones, Noah Pyzik, Noah Robbins, Jay O. Sanders, Heather Alicia Simms, Bill Timoney, and Kara Young. Kenny Leon directs.

The play marks Odom’s return to Broadway after winning the Tony for his performance as Aaron Burr in Hamilton.mThe creative team will feature scenic design by Derek McLane, costume design by Emilio Sosa, lighting design by Adam Honoré and sound design by Peter Fitzgerald.

Purlie Victorious tells the story of a Black preacher’s machinations to reclaim his inheritance and win back his church.

Leslie Odom Jr. is returning to Broadway this summer in a revival of Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch.

Kenny Leon, who directed Topdog/Underdog and Ohio State Murders this season, will helm the revival of the play by Ossie Davis. The play is scheduled to begin in late summer 2023, which will place it in the 2023-2024 season, but exact dates and the theater have not yet been announced.

This is the first time Odom has appeared on Broadway since winning a Tony Award for his role in the original cast of Hamilton. Since then, he has appeared in several films, including Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, Harriet and One Night in Miami.

The play, which is a satirical look at life in the South, originally premiered on Broadway in 1961, with the playwright starring as Purlie Victorious Judson (the role Odom will play in the new production) and his wife,...

Tony & Grammy winner Leslie Odom, Jr. will star in a new Broadway production of the classic American comedy Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch by Ossie Davis. Purlie Victorious will be staged by Tony Award winner Kenny Leon, with the production scheduled to begin in late summer 2023 for the 2023-2024 Broadway season.

The play will mark Odom’s return to Broadway after winning the Tony for his celebrated performance as Aaron Burr in Hamilton.

The creative team will feature scenic design by Derek McLane, costume design by Emilio Sosa and lighting design by Adam Honoré.

The producing team is led by Jeffrey Richards, Hunter Arnold, Irene Gandy, Jacob Soroken Porter, Kayla Greenspan and Leslie Odom, Jr., making his Broadway producing debut.

Theatre, dates, additional casting and creative team members will be announced at a later date.

Producer Tonya Lewis Lee, tweeted the above photo last night, along with the caption:  Pauletta Washington and @iamKENNYLEON working on the set of #wgtb. And in case you weren't aware, Pauletta Washington is superstar Denzel Washington's wife, who's an actress as well.  The couple first met her back in 1977, when she was Pauletta Pearson, on the set of the 1977 TV movie Wilma, which both actors co-starred in, and which was Pauletta's very first on screen role. 4 years later, in 1981, she would get to work again on her second TV movie role, in the comedy/musical Purlie. And then, 2 years later, the couple got married, Pauletta put her career...

El Paso, Texas — Friends and family remembered actor Sherman Hemsley at his funeral Wednesday in Texas by showing video clips of him as George Jefferson, the TV role that was his best known.

About 150 people attended the service at Cielo Vista Church in El Paso. Hemsley, 74, died of lung cancer on July 24, but a fight over his estate delayed his burial.

Mourners couldn't help but laugh as they watched the clips of Hemsley playing the feisty, bigoted owner of a chain of dry-cleaning businesses on "The Jeffersons."

"He helped us to laugh, gave us an opportunity to forget the troubles, the stresses of life," El Paso Police Department chaplain Sam Faraone said during Hemsley's eulogy.

Hemsley, an Air Force veteran, was buried at the Fort Bliss National Cemetery.

"The best way I can describe it is by how we released a dove" at the burial, longtime friend Flora Enchinton Bernal...

Beloved television actor Sherman Hemsley, who starred as high-strung George Jefferson on CBS' The Jeffersons, has died. He was found at his home in El Paso, Texas, yesterday and is said to have died of natural causes. He was 74 years old.

Sherman Alexander Hemsley was born in Philadelphia, studied drama in New York at the Negro Ensemble Company and the Urban Arts Company. He made his Broadway debut in the satirical musical comedy Purlie and later toured with the show.

Norman Lear lured him away from Broadway to play George Jefferson, a recurring character on the popular All in the Family sitcom. Lear once said, "The cocky energy of the guy was totally in sync with the offstage image we had created of George." George and wife "Weezy" (Isabel Sanford) proved to be so popular that they were later given their own spin-off, The...

TV legend Sherman Hemsley has died at age 74. Circumstances of his death are still unclear but no foul play is suspected. Hemsley, a former post office worker, drifted into acting in stage productions before he was cast by Norman Lear in the hit sitcom All in the Family. He guest-starred as George Jefferson,  an African American version of Carroll O'Connor's Archie Bunker, as both characters were bigots who still maintained admirable traits. The character of George Jefferson, a successful Harlem businessman, was innovative on television in that he channeled much of the black community's frustrations over prejudice and intolerance. Hemsley's performance was so well-received that Lear spun him off into his own sitcom, The Jeffersons, from 1975-1985. On that show, Hemsley's foil was his wise-cracking, no nonsense wife Weezie (Isabele Sanford). Following that show, Hemsley had a five year run in anothet hit sitcom, Amen. He continued to appear...

Sherman Hemsley, who starred in the iconic 1970s sitcom The Jeffersons, was found dead in his El Paso, TX home today, according to reports. He was 74. Hemsley was personally picked by All In The Family creator Norman Lear to play George Jefferson alongside Louise Jefferson (Isabel Sanford) as the newly arrived neighbors of Archie and Edith Bunker. Lear eventually spun off the characters in 1975 and created The Jeffersons, about a successful black family who lived in Manhattan. The show ran 10 years. Hemsley, who also starred on Broadway in the 1970s musical comedy Purlie, later starred on the sitcom Amen playing a church deacon.

Sherman Hemsley, the hot-tempered, upwardly mobile, janitor-turned-dry-cleaner-owner George Jefferson in TV's iconic The Jeffersons, has died at 74. Hemsley died at his home in El Paso, Texas, police say. A cause of death was not immediately known. Introduced each week with the gospel Movin' On Up theme song, producer Norman Lear's show gave Hemsley a larger-than-life character who delivered a brand of comedy all his own. Zingers like "If I paid you to think, you could cash your check at the penny arcade!" paired with over-the-top gestures left audiences across the country in stitches. The show has lived on for years in reruns on cable.

The New McCree Theatre was award a $10,000 Access to Artistic Excellence grant for Musical Theater by the National Endowment for the Arts. This grant is being used to support McCree?s Traveling Theatre Experience (Tte)program. Tte is presenting the hit Broadway musical, Purlie, based on the play, Purlie Victorious by Ossie Davis, June 12 and 13, 2009 at 8:00 p.m. at the beautiful Malcolm Field Theatre on the campus of Saginaw Valley State University, 7400 Bay Road, 3 miles north of the Fashion Square Mall.

Based on the play, Purlie Victorious by Ossie Davis, Purlie Victorious, that struttin' new fangled preacher is back home and he wants a church and he wants freedom. Memorable music and heaps of fun unfold as Purlie out maneuvers ol' massa. Purlie will preview at the "New" McCree Theatre, 322 E. Hamilton, Flint, February 19 -21, 2009. Regular performances will be held February 26 - March 14, 2009. All performances will be held on Thursday and Friday at 8:00 p.m. and on Saturdays at 3:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. Admission prices for previews are: Advance tickets, $8.00 for adults and $5.00 for students and senior citizens; at the door prices are $10.00 for adults and $6.00 for students and senior citizens. Admission prices for regular performances are $12.00 and $7.00 in advance, and $15.00 and $10.00 at the door.