Gold Derby
Tony Nominated Actors Who’ve Charted On The Billboard Hot 100
By Braden Fitzsimmons
May 01, 2025
With the 2025 Tony awards set to announce this week, three of the widely predicted nominees have a history on Billboard’s pop charts as part of various groups and solo careers (Darren Criss with the Glee Cast – Maybe Happy Ending; Nicole Scherzinger with The Pussycat Dolls and Sunset Blvd; Michelle Williams – Destiny’s Child & Death Becomes Her). Despite frequent successes and crossover for musicals from the great white way on the Billboard 200, that success rarely transfers over to individual performers on the singles chart, so thought this would be interesting time to which actors throughout Tony history have also shared a history with the mainline pop charts for singles at some point in their career.
Tony Winning Actors with a #1 hit:
Tony Winning Actors with a top hit:
- Idina Menzel
Tony Winning Actors with top 40 song:
- Robert Goulet
- Melba Moore
- Linda Hopkins
- Bernadette Peters
- Jennifer Holliday
- Ruth Brown
- Jonathan Groff
Tony Winning Actors with Hot 100 charting song:
- Heather Headley
- Kristen Chenoweth
- Neil Patrick Harris
- Ben Platt
- Hugh Jackman
- Cynthia Erivo
Tony Nominated Actors with a #1 hit:
- Davy Jones
- Sammy Davis Jr
- Barbra Streisand
- Linda Ronstadt
- Al Green
- Vanessa Williams
- Bradley Cooper*
- as far as I am aware, Cooper is the only Tony nominated performer whose nomination comes from a play instead of a musical, to chart on the Hot 100.
Tony Nominated Actors with a top ten hit:
- Anna Kendrick
- Sara Bareilles
Tony Nominated Actors with a Hot 100 charting song:
- Lin Manuel Miranda
- Keala Settle
- Josh Groban
- Sharon D. Clarke
- Ethan Slater
I’m a little confused by this list. It seems that if Bette won a Tony, then she also would have been nominated for a Tony, which would make her appear in every one of the categories listed. For example, since she had a #1 song, wouldn’t that also have been a Top 40 song? Same logic goes for Barbra, who would appear in every “nominated” category listed. Anyway, hooray for Bette for coming out on top!! I would just put Bette in every one of the categories, because she deserves it, and that’s that! If Gold Derby doesn’t like it, then they can kiss my brass!
I was confused to0 and thinking the exact same way as you are, but I guess the guy who wrote it had a different thought process going on, so I put it up as is. I should have said something, so you did…lol