Schmigadoon! wins best musical, giving Apple TV its first Tony

A canceled Apple TV comedy turned into Broadway’s newest prestige asset Sunday night, as Schmigadoon! won best musical at the 79th Annual Tony Awards at Radio City Music Hall in New York City, hosted by P!NK. The victory gave Apple TV its first Tony and capped a 12-nomination run that tied the show for the most nominated musical of the year.

Producer Christine Schwarzman used the acceptance speech to frame the win as a kind of industry irony. She thanked Apple TV for “canceling the third season of Schmigadoon,” crediting the shutdown with giving the team a chance to rework the project for the stage.

Schmigadoon! left the ceremony with four Tonys total: best musical, best book of a musical for Cinco Paul, best original score for Cinco Paul and best orchestrations. The show also drew nominations for Sara Chase and Ana Gasteyer, along with Christopher Gattelli, Doug Besterman, Mike Morris, Walter Trarbach, Donald Holder, Linda Cho and Scott Pask, underscoring how fully the series had been translated into a Broadway production. The original Apple TV series had already won one Emmy and earned seven nominations, including its 2022 win for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics for “Corn Puddin’.”

The result points to a larger business shift in live theater. Apple canceled the series in 2024, but the Broadway version, co-produced by Apple TV, turned a niche streaming title with a devoted audience into a stage property with premium-ticket potential. The production was set to run at the Nederlander Theatre through at least Jan. 3, 2027, giving the company a second life for an asset that might otherwise have been left behind when the platform moved on. In that sense, Broadway is increasingly functioning as a rescue market for prestige TV brands that still carry value even after their streaming run ends.

For Apple, the Tony capped a rapid awards climb that began with Billy Crudup’s 2020 Emmy win for The Morning Show, continued with CODA’s three Oscars in 2022 and reached the Grammy category in February 2026 through Chris Stapleton’s “Bad As I Used to Be” from F1. By the timeline cited Sunday, Apple completed the EGOT journey in about six-and-a-half years, roughly half the time it took Netflix, which finished its own circuit in 2025 with Stranger Things: The First Shadow.