Good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining us tonight for a live episode of the Hollywood Reporter's Awards Chatter podcast, which I say for our listeners is being recorded in front of an audience of students at Chapman University in California's Orange

County. I'm Scott Feinberg, T.HR's Executive Editor of Awards coverage and trustee professor

here at Chapman's Dodge College of Film and Media Arts. And I've had the great privilege of

interviewing hundreds of incredibly talented people for this podcast over the past 10 plus years,

but I've got to tell you, I don't think I have ever been more awestruck of a guest than I am tonight.

We are about to be joined by an actress and singer who, at just 55, is already a legend.

She's an all-time giant of the theater.

Indeed, if Broadway had a Mount Rushmore, her face would surely be on it.

And she has also quietly done impressive work on screens big and small, most recently

on three seasons of the HBO drama series The Gilded Age.

Along the way, she has won a record six Tonys for acting, including at least one in each of the four categories

in which a female performer is eligible out of a record 11 Tony nominations for acting.

She's also won two Grammys out of four nominations and one Emmy out of five, leaving her

just an O shy of an Egot. She also has been selected by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential

people in the world and was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Obama. The playwright

Terence McNallick said of her, she is the type of actress who can inspire writers the way Mary Martin

did in her heyday. The actor and singer Mandy Patankan asserted, she's got a voice from God, just straight from God.

And the former New York Times theater critic Frank Rich

in the liner notes of her 1999 album, How Glory Goes,

wrote,

If the American Musical didn't already exist,

it would have to be invented for her.

...