{"id":481923,"date":"2026-06-08T07:19:07","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T07:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/481923\/"},"modified":"2026-06-08T07:19:07","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T07:19:07","slug":"watch-leslie-odom-jr-lead-powerful-tony-awards-2026-in-memoriam-tribute-with-rent-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/481923\/","title":{"rendered":"Watch Leslie Odom Jr. Lead Powerful Tony Awards 2026 In Memoriam Tribute With Rent Song"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tony-winning Hamilton<\/a> star Leslie Odom, Jr.<\/a> led the In Memoriam tribute\u00a0June 7 at the 79th Annual Tony Awards,\u00a0broadcast live from Radio City Music
\nHall on CBS and streamed via Paramount+.<\/p>\n

Odom, Jr. delivered a haunting rendition of “Without You”\u2014from the late\u00a0Jonathan Larson<\/a>‘s Pulitzer Prize-winning Rent<\/a>,\u00a0currently\u00a0celebrating its 30th anniversary\u2014as the names and faces of the many talented, irreplaceable\u00a0artists the theatre world lost during the past year were displayed.<\/p>\n

Watch the complete\u00a0In Memoriam segment in the video above.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For
\n his portrayal of Hamilton’s\u00a0Aaron Burr, Odom won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a
\n Musical and a Grammy Award for his performance on the original cast
\nrecording. The stage and screen star was previously on Broadway in a Tony-nominated turn in the 2023 revival of Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch. Since his breakout role in Hamilton, the actor has been seen on screen in The
\n Good Wife, Murder on the Orient Express, One Dollar, Only, Love in the
\nTime of Corona, Central Park, Abbott Elementary, The Many Saints of
\nNewark, and an Oscar-nominated performance in One Night in Miami\u2026 Odom, Jr. also hosted The Tony Awards Present: Broadway\u2019s Back on CBS and can be seen in the filmed TV version of Hamilton. The actor will also make his West End debut in Hamilton later this summer.<\/a><\/p>\n

Directed by Michael Greif<\/a>, Rent opened at Broadway’s
\nNederlander Theatre April 29, 1996, following previews that began April
\n16. The musical received 10 1996 Tony nominations, subsequently winning
\nfour, including Best Musical. Larson’s work also won the 1996 Pulitzer
\nPrize for Drama. After 16 previews and 5,123 regular performances, the
\nproduction played its final show September 7, 2008. Set in Manhattan in the 1990s and inspired by Puccini\u2019s opera La Boh\u00e8me,
\n the hit musical follows a group of young East Village artists,
\nperformers, and philosophers as they struggle through the hardships of
\npoverty, societal discord, and the AIDS epidemic in the search for life,
\n love, and art.\u00a0A 30th anniversary concert will be held on Broadway later this year.<\/a><\/p>\n

See the full list of the 2026 Tony winners here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tony-winning Hamilton star Leslie Odom, Jr. led the In Memoriam tribute\u00a0June 7 at the 79th Annual Tony Awards,\u00a0broadcast…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":481924,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[146,85,46,409],"class_list":["post-481923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=481923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481923\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/481924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}