Pink at the Tonys — as the host? She didn’t see it coming either.
“I was like, ‘Why? I don’t get it,’” the pop star said of being offered the gig by the show’s organizers. Their pitch, as she recalled it: “You love theater” — a couple of her pop hits are featured in the jukebox musicals “& Juliet” and “Moulin Rouge!” — “you and your daughter are all about theater, and we want to get more eyes on the Tonys.”
That cinched it. “I was like, ‘Ah, I hear that I could be useful in some way!’” Pink said. Her 15-year-old daughter, Willow Sage Hart, a Broadway obsessive and aspiring stage performer, also enthusiastically approved. Last August, Pink and her husband, Carey Hart, moved their family to New York so Willow could attend an arts high school here. They’ve been at many curtain calls since.
A few days ago, Pink was busy learning fresh numbers written by her pals Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (“Dear Evan Hansen”) as well as Mark Sonnenblick, alongside Broadway stars like Shoshana Bean, Christiani Pitts and Sara Chase, all Tony nominees this year. “It’s a lot of unknowns that I’m not used to,” Pink said about the awards show during an interview in her car. She was speeding to take her 9-year-old son, Jameson Hart, to a piano lesson in between rehearsals at Radio City Music Hall. “But I like it because it’s stretching me.”
Growing up in Doylestown, Penn., Pink, now 46, was thrilled to see touring productions of shows like “Phantom of the Opera” in Philadelphia, and wore out her “Annie” record at home. She wanted to be the lead in the school version of “Cats,” she said. “But Jenny Stern was the lead in everything. Guess where she ended up? Broadway.” (Pink was Rumpleteazer, in a leotard, pajama pants and a headband stuffed with socks for the ears. She was hooked: “Oh, this is it. I have to be onstage.”)
“Theater was, kind of, all kids like us had,” she said. “A room where we could all just take a collective breath and be ourselves, as goofy as we actually were, and no one was going to make fun of us.”
Her own concerts are very theatrical: “Circus meets rock opera, with a story.” Will she do some of her signature aerial acrobatics at the Tonys? “Not as much as I wanted,” she said. “Radio City can’t handle what I do.”
Besides, she quickly added, the night was not about her; one of her caveats in taking the job was that she would make fun of herself. “We have to establish that I’m ridiculous,” she said, “and we’re just here to have a good time. As physically demanding and artistically high-voltage as her shows are, she is still dazzled by the skills and energy of Broadway performers, from swings on up.
“Watching people learn entire acts in two days is mind-boggling,” she said. And she was touched by the support she and her daughter have gotten from the theater community. So on the Tonys stage, she said, “I celebrate all of you. Look at all of you, knowing what to do.”