At 96, June Squibb earns first Tony nomination for Marjorie Prime

June Squibb’s first Tony nomination arrived at 96, turning a Broadway return into a record-setting moment. Her nod for Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play, for Marjorie Prime, made her the oldest acting nominee in Tony Awards history and sharpened the spotlight on how rarely older women receive center stage roles with this kind of visibility.

Squibb played Marjorie, an elderly woman living with dementia and memory loss, in the Broadway revival that officially opened Dec. 8, 2025, at the Helen Hayes Theater. In Jordan Harrison’s play, Marjorie revisits her past through an AI-generated version of her late husband, Walter, a premise that gives the production a distinctly contemporary edge while keeping the emotional weight on aging, grief and the struggle to preserve memory. For a performer whose career has stretched across generations of American theater, the part offered both a dramatic showcase and a rare leading presence for an older woman on Broadway.

The nomination, announced May 5, also placed Squibb ahead of the previous record holder, Lois Smith, who was 89 when nominated for The Inheritance in 2020. It was Squibb’s first Tony nomination despite a Broadway career that began when she made her debut in Gypsy in 1959, playing Electra. That arc, from a young supporting player in one of Broadway’s most famous musicals to a first-time Tony contender nearly seven decades later, speaks to a kind of reinvention that Broadway does not always make easy, especially for women whose strongest work comes later in life.

Squibb’s recognition came in a season when 15 performers over age 50 received Tony nominations, a reminder that Broadway continues to reward experience even as age-conscious casting remains uneven. On the same day, Marjorie Prime co-star Danny Burstein earned his ninth Tony nomination, making him the most Tony-nominated male performer in history. Squibb celebrated both the milestone and her colleague’s record, saying, “I’m thrilled with what this nomination will do for my career,” and adding, “Over the moon for Danny as well!”

Long before this moment, Squibb built a reputation that reached far beyond awards. In the 1960s, she became known for a brash backstage persona and the nickname of Broadway’s “foulest” or “dirtiest” mouth, a label tied to her early work and the blunt charisma she brought to the stage. Decades later, the nomination for Marjorie Prime showed a different side of that same longevity: a veteran actor still finding new relevance, and a Broadway industry still learning how much it stands to gain when it writes substantial roles for older women.