Michael Riedel chatted with Santino Fontana following the news of his Tony Award nomination about bringing the 1982 film to the stage and recognizing what women have to go through on a daily basis.
"The script is updated to 2019 and theatre is a completely different medium than a movie and our creators I think smartly embrace that. So what we're doing is very different from the movie and yet people who love the movie will see the story and recognize it and yet it's brought up to today... I think people who see the the play will recognize the same things of the story that this is a guy so desperate he's willing to do anything for a job he pretends to be a woman and then he falls in love with somebody and he's a fraud and that's the conflict and that's the story and that's Tootsie and it's about actors. What Robert Horn has done I think is brilliant under the guidance of Scott Ellis and David Yazbek and our producers I think they've done an amazing job."
In addition to Fontana's Tony Award nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical, Tootsie received 11 total Tony Nominations including, Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical, Best Original Score (Music and/or Lyrics) Written for the Theatre, Best Costume Design of a Musical, Best Direction of a Musical, Best Choreography, and Best Orchestrations. Fontana's cast mates Andy Grotelueschen, Lilli Cooper, and Sarah Stiles were nominated for Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical and Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical respectively.