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The first time the team at Oh, Mary! asked Bowen Yang if he wanted to play Mary Todd Lincoln, he turned down the role. It was last summer, and Yang was slated to return to Saturday Night Live for half the season. \u201cI was too yoked to that timeframe to give myself the proper runway,\u201d Yang says. \u201cI was not going to take a Broadway debut without the utmost seriousness and gravitas and respect.\u201d A few months after his final SNL episode in December, he went to see understudy Hannah Solow play Mary. It was his fifth time seeing the show, but this time around, it hit him differently. \u201cIt\u2019s a show that is at first about regrets, in the way that I regretted letting this offer go,\u201d Yang says. \u201cMary feels trapped by her own decisions and then she understands that it is, in fact, other people\u2019s decisions that have sort of kept her in this place.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now, he\u2019s getting the opportunity. Starting September 15, Yang is set to make his first Broadway appearance as the latest Mary. It\u2019s a casting coup for a production that has continually served up savvy choices for the role of its central diva, the violent, alcoholic, audience-starved Mary. So far, the Broadway production has been led by prestige TV mainstay Betty Gilpin, downtown\u2013theater legend John Cameron Mitchell, drag icon Jinkx Monsoon, Broadway vet Tituss Burgess, sitcom grande dame Jane Krakowski, SNL alum Maya Rudolph, and alt-comedian Megan Stalter. \u201cEach of these Marys have been so different but are at the same time serving the play,\u201d casting director Henry Russell Bergstein says. \u201cYou need a one-of-a-kind performer and someone who knows how to handle doing eight shows a week.\u201d The rotating cast of stars has allowed the production to endure in a way that\u2019s rare for Broadway; the show has managed to not yet stoop to embarrassing stunt casting while simultaneously featuring exciting stars who bring audience members back for eighth, ninth, and tenth times.<\/p>\n
At first, the show\u2019s creator, Cole Escola, and director, Sam Pinkleton, did not envision casting anyone besides Escola in the main role for what they thought would be a limited run. The entire project was born of Escola\u2019s particular fascinations: pre-Code melodrama, alt-comedy, cabaret kitsch, and downtown queer theater. The idea of replacing Escola seemed anathema to that spirit. But after the show played to sold-out audiences Off Broadway, then on Broadway, the question became inevitable. \u201cWe thought we were going to run for a certain amount of time and then we didn\u2019t,\u201d Pinkleton says. \u201cIt was born out of a logistical problem, which was that Cole is only human. It was a bit of a crisis: Fuck. How can this play exist?\u201d
Escola left the show in January 2025 after about a year of performances on and Off Broadway. To replace them, Oh, Mary! needed someone who could not only excel in the role but also prove the play works without Escola\u2019s presence. \u201cWe didn\u2019t want to cast someone who felt like Cole 2.0,\u201d Bergstein recalls. \u201cAnd there was a real push to cast an actor with a capital A, like a Cherry Jones type.\u201d That led to one specific person. \u201cWhen you look at the Venn diagram of Meryl Streep and Cole Escola,\u201d Bergstein says, \u201cthe only answer is Betty Gilpin.\u201d<\/p>\n
The four-time Emmy nominee received the offer on an Oval Office set while filming Death by Lightning, in which she portrays a different First Lady, Lucretia Garfield. \u201cI was heavily corseted and suddenly was like, I can\u2019t breathe at all. I\u2019m gonna faint,\u201d Gilpin says. \u201cI felt similarly to many people: Nobody can do this but Cole. Then my inner Eve Harrington came over me and I was like, I have to do this.\u201d For Escola, Gilpin\u2019s casting was the dream: \u201cI\u202fremember being excited about seeing the role played by the greatest actress of my generation.\u201d<\/p>\n
The part provided Gilpin the opportunity to finally take on the type of role she always wants but never gets. \u201cI\u2019ve spent 20\u202fyears playing parts that are written as pixie dream girls, trying to be like, \u2018But what if she\u2019s trapped and mentally ill?\u2019 And the writer\u2019s like, \u2018She\u2019s never been more free,\u2019\u2009\u201d Gilpin explains. \u201cI know Mary Todd better than anyone I\u2019ve ever played. It was the experience of my life. It was my favorite part.\u201d To define her Mary separately from Escola\u2019s, Gilpin approached the role like a true dramatic actress, thinking, \u201cThis is my Blanche DuBois. I\u2019m going to play this deadly serious.\u201d What she learned was that the play acts as a prism, refracting the performer\u2019s reference points rather than just forcing an imitation of Escola. \u201cOne second, you\u2019re Barbara Stanwyck, then it\u2019s Animaniacs,\u201d she says. \u201cI wondered if that was Cole\u2019s roster of genres or just mine. Whoever is playing Mary, you are seeing all the characters they were playing in their bedroom alone.\u201d Her success in differentiating herself allowed Oh, Mary! to continue running while Escola took a break (they later returned to the part and won a Tony for it) and gave the show a path forward.<\/p>\n
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\n \u201cEach of these Marys have been so different but are at the same time serving the play,\u201d casting director Henry Russell Bergstein says. \u201cYou need a one-of-a-kind performer and someone who knows how to handle doing eight shows a week.\u201d
\n Photo-Illustration: Alicia Tatone; Photos: Emilio Madrid, Marc J. Franklin, Evan Zimmerman\n <\/p>\n
These days, deciding who will play the next Mary is a process that requires continual effort. Bergstein, Escola, Pinkleton, and the show\u2019s producers, Mike Lavoie, Carlee Briglia, Lucas McMahon, and Kevin McCollum, are in perpetual conversation about whom they could ask. They talk about it over text, over email, and when they see one another at a party or before a show. Finding the right person is alchemy, and the logistics are important. When the time comes to search, Bergstein reaches out to performers\u2019 teams to determine eligibility. Sometimes they have a potential Mary read, and other times they simply put out an offer. \u201cYou\u2019re making lists, you\u2019re checking avails, and you\u2019re learning the alignment of who\u2019s available with what we need,\u201d Bergstein says. \u201cIt\u202fcomes down to schedule.\u201d Who makes it to the top of the list? \u201cMary the character is someone who feels like she has parts of herself that she\u2019s dying to show but hasn\u2019t had the chance to,\u201d Escola says. \u201cIt\u2019s exciting when a performer has that same quality.\u201d Even the biggest stars they\u2019ve cast, like Rudolph, need to be prepared for the madcap show. \u201cThe first time I met with Maya, she just seemed like she was game,\u201d Pinkleton remembers. \u201cThat proved to be true in her run.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sometimes they don\u2019t know immediately who goes where. Originally, the team was considering Stalter, the current Mary, to lead the nationwide tour. \u201cWhen we saw her read, she was ready for Broadway,\u201d Bergstein remembers. \u201cShe was so passionate about it, and it\u2019s one thing to be passionate about something and another thing to be able to do it. We were like, \u2018This is really great.\u2019\u2009\u201d Pinkleton, meanwhile, realized it was more fun to have the sui generis Stalter on Broadway, where Mary experimentations are by now par for the course, rather than on tour, where \u201cpeople would be encountering the play for the first time.\u201d (The tour will be led by two Marys: RuPaul\u2019s Drag Race All Stars winner Alaska Thunderfuck and Tony winner J. Harrison Ghee.)<\/p>\n
Yang plans to take his Mary in a more aggressive direction. \u201cI\u2019m not afraid to be masculine,\u201d he says. \u201cMary having a complete delusion about her skills versus how other people perceive her feels very male to me in a way I relate with.\u201d Pinkleton agrees: \u201cI\u202fthink Bowen\u2019s Mary will be particularly intense. Bowen\u2019s Mary might be a real viper. She will be very strong.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yang has found the play surprisingly resonant for personal reasons as well. \u201cI\u202ffelt like I should leave SNL, but then after I\u202fleft it, I was like, But I miss it already,\u201d he says. \u201cThere\u2019s this weird dialectic thing Mary has in her relationship with the cabaret. She\u2019s like, \u2018I want nothing more than to go back to it.\u2019 And then Abe calls out the fact that she did not enjoy it when she was in it. That is not reflective of my SNL experience, but there was a parallel: I\u2019m currently in a transitional place in my life where I am trapped by my boredom.\u201d<\/p>\n
After Yang, the team will return to the list. Everyone\u2019s tight-lipped about who\u2019s on it, but nobody seems out of the question. (Except, maybe, for former Real Housewives of Beverly Hills cast member Lisa Rinna, who recently posted on TikTok that she wants to play the part but that \u201cI\u202fdon\u2019t think they, \u2018they\u2019 being the casting directors, think I could do it.\u201d) Each member of the team involved has different wishes. Bergstein says he\u2019s waiting for the right time to cast his favorite downtown theater icons. Pinkleton eschews specifics but notes he\u2019s looking for a \u201ccompletely feral energy.\u201d If Escola could cast anyone, living or dead, in the part, it would be the John Waters mainstay Divine. But per Pinkleton, the only way they can really work is not to think that far ahead. \u201cI\u202fapproach it with goldfish brain,\u201d he says. \u201cThere have been people we\u2019ve talked about who I didn\u2019t think would be a good idea who have gone on to play Mary and been amazing. The play has been rewarded because we\u2019ve just been looking at the thing in front of us.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\n If you prefer to read in print, you can also find this article in the August 10, 2026, issue of
\n New York\u00a0Magazine.<\/p>\n