Broadway alums Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Emma Stone were honored for their screenwork with Oscars on March 10. The 96th annual Academy Awards ceremony was held at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles with Jimmy Kimmel as host.
Randolph, whose Broadway debut as Oda Mae Brown in “Ghost The Musical” earned her a 2012 Tony Award nomination, took home the Oscar as Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Mary Lamb in “The Holdovers.” Randolph was nominated alongside fellow former Tony nominee Danielle Brooks for reprising her Broadway turn as Sofia in “The Color Purple.”
“I didn’t think I was supposed to be doing this as a career,” said Randolph in her speech. “I started off as a singer, and my mother said to me, ‘Go across that street to that theater department; there’s something for you there.’ And I thank my mother for doing that.”
Stone, who appeared on Broadway as a replacement for the role of Sally Bowles in the 2014 staging of “Cabaret,” earned her second Oscar as Best Leading Actress for a performance as Bella Baxter in “Poor Things”; the category included Tony-nominated stage alums Annette Bening — Oscar-nominated for her turn as Diana in “Nyad” — and Carey Mulligan — for her performance as Felicia in the Leonard Bernstein biopic “Maestro.”
Stone was also Oscar-nominated as a producer of “Poor Things” in the category of Best Picture, an award that ultimately went to “Oppenheimer.” Stone won a previous Oscar, also as Leading Actress, in 2017 for her turn as Mia in the movie musical “La La Land” and was nominated in the Supporting Actress category in 2015 for “Birdman” and 2019 for “The Favourite.”
“It’s not about me,” said Stone in her “Poor Things” Oscar speech. “It’s about a team that came together to make something greater than the sum of its parts. And that is the best part about making movies — is all of us together.”
Also of interest to theater fans is the Oscar winner for Best Original Song, “What Was I Made For?” (penned by Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell) from the movie musical “Barbie.”
Other major-category Oscar wins went to Cillian Murphy as Leading Actor and Robert Downey Jr. as Supporting Actor, both for their performances in “Oppenheimer.”
For a full list of 2024 Academy Award winners, click here.
