This is Cole Escola, a non-binary artist and Tony Award winner for Best Actor in a Female Role.

On the night of Sunday, June 8, New York experienced one of those galas that makes it the city that never sleeps. The 78th edition of the Tony Awards gathered the best talents from the Broadway scene at the Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan, in a gala hosted by actress Cynthia Erivo that celebrated the best of the past year on stage.

Among the most memorable moments was that of artist and playwright Cole Escola (Clatskanie, United States, 38 years old) when he went up to collect his award for Best Actor in a Play for Oh, Mary! — the historical comedy he also wrote —. He did so in a “Cinderella blue” dress inspired by the look that actress Bernadette Peters wore at the same ceremony in 1999. A choice that perhaps brought him luck, as that night the performer won the Tony for Best Actress in a Musical for Annie Get Your Gun.

Escola, who identifies as non-binary, competed in this year’s Tony Awards in the same category as actors George Clooney, Jon Michael Hill, Daniel Dae Kim, Harry Lennix, and Louis McCartney, whom he beat in his Broadway debut for his portrayal of Mary Todd Lincoln, wife of President Abraham Lincoln and First Lady of the United States from 1861 to 1865; the protagonist of his play.

Before his success on stage, Escola acted in film and television (Difficult People, 2015; Search Party, 2020) and worked as a producer and writer on the series Hacks (2021) and The Other Two (2019). Although perhaps what best defines this comedian are the funny and surreal sketches he posted on YouTube in the 2010s alongside fellow comedian Jeffery Self, culminating in Very Good Looking (VGL) Gay Boys, a project they eventually sold to Logo TV.

It was in 2022 when Cole Escola publicly came out as non-binary. About the opportunity he had in Broadway with Oh, Mary!, he stated: “This play is about a woman who has a dream that no one understands.” He expressed his gratitude during an interview on the radio show Fresh Air: “I can’t believe my big break came with something I wanted to do. I always thought that if I ever had any kind of successful career, it would be as the gay friend in a sitcom.”

Oh, Mary! is a historical satire mixed with absurd humor that portrays the miserable and suffocated Mary Todd Lincoln in the weeks leading up to her husband’s assassination. The author claims he did no research for it and even forgot things he knew about the historical figure. Since its premiere, the play has earned awards such as the Obie, Drama Desk, Theatre World, and Outer Critics Circle.

Displaying unfiltered humor, during his acceptance speech for the Tony, Escola remembered his mother (“Hi, Mom, I love you, I’ll call you when I can,” he said looking at the camera), his fellow nominees, friends, and even a Grindr date— the app for LGBTQ+ people— whom he referred to as “T Bone.”

Two Met Galas and Now the Tony

As the magazine New Yorker referred to Escola last August, with Oh, Mary!, the artist and comedian has become a “cult icon of the queer comedy world to It They of Broadway [playing on the word “They” as a gender-neutral pronoun used among non-binary individuals in English-speaking countries].”

Additionally, according to the New York publication, shortly after the premiere of Oh, Mary! Off-Broadway in January 2024, Escola began appearing on late-night TV shows and was even invited to the 2024 Met Gala, where he posed in a white suit by Thom Browne and a basket bag shaped like a dachshund.

This year at the same gala, which is organized yearly by Anna Wintour at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and gathers the most interesting names in the media and cultural landscape, Escola once again stole the spotlight on the red carpet, this time in a colorful suit by Christopher John Rogers. Being invited to one of the most media-centric nights in the world, which gathers the most celebrities per square meter, is the definitive confirmation that you are someone in the entertainment industry or are about to be. But Escola, as he confessed to New Yorker last summer, still questions his newfound fame: “When I’m in those places, I feel like a shoe someone left in the theater,” he said about events like the Met Gala. The recognition from this year’s Tony Awards could be the affirmation he was hoping for the launch of an unstoppable career.