When Oh, Mary! first premiered Off-Broadway in February 2024, we here at T&C were instantly smitten. “This show is timeless,” we wrote in an early piece on star and writer Cole Escola, before noting that historical comedy, which takes broad and hilarious liberties in telling a fictionalized story of Mary Todd Lincoln, “is as smart as it is stupid… as funny as it is serious.”
Nearly a year later, Oh, Mary! has moved from its original West Village venue to Broadway’s Lyceum Theatre, where it became a bona fide hit and a favorite for any number of awards. In January, Escola took a final-for-now turn as Lincoln, and the Emmy-nominated actress Betty Gilpin—who has starred in projects including Gaslit, Three Women, and American Primeval—stepped into the part. (Beginning March 18, Tituss Burgess will play the role in a limited engagement.)
For both Gilpin and Tony Award-nominated director Sam Pinkleton, it was an opportunity to try something new with the show’s dastardly, dipsomaniacal Lincoln—and something of a risk, considering how associated with the show Escola has become. Here, the two discuss Mrs. Lincoln’s second most eventful experience at the theater.
At what point did the idea come about that playing Mary Todd Lincoln was a possibility for someone who wasn’t Cole?
Sam Pinkleton: It was very early, actually. But I think when Cole and I said it to each other and when we said it to someone, not in our immediate, Oh, Mary! circle were definitely different times. There was a very clear moment when we were in rehearsals Off-Broadway and we were finalizing designs and really starting to figure out what the production was going to look, sound, and feel like. We always had an understudy for Cole, the amazing Hannah Solow, and initially I thought, she’s never going to go on, this is the Cole show. But then I realized, this is just a play—Cole’s performance is singular, but it didn’t have to be Cole, it could be done by many people. And it’s so well written; Cole wrote a part that so many great performers could do.
Betty Gilpin: I remember hearing Cole speak on the Las Culturistas podcast about wanting there to be future Marys beyond them playing her, and I remember thinking they were maybe insane. Well, they definitely are insane, which is part of their once-in-a-lifetime genius. My agent texted me this summer saying there was a possibility they were interested in me doing a limited run as Mary, and if someone can vomit joy, that’s what I did. It was less of a scream and more of a vomit of vowels. And then I spent the weeks leading up to our rehearsal process going back-and-forth between, this is the worst idea anyone has ever had, and… This is the only thing that I can do in this life. I cannot make edible food, I don’t know where my passport is, I certainly don’t remember the quadratic equation, no idea how the stock market or weather systems work. But in the dead of night, I knew I could play this part. It’s been the honor of my life!
Sam, how do you begin figuring out who could step into those shoes?
SP: First of all, the show is a bullet—no pun intended. It is a play that thinks it’s a musical, so it’s an intense and athletic event. The most boring thing we could do is ask, who’s going to do it like Cole? Because nobody’s going to do it like Cole—there’s only one Cole—and I’m uninterested in seeing anybody try to do an imitation. But when you turn that question on its side and it becomes who is as fearless as Cole, who is as surprising as Cole, who has such a sense of anarchy, and it’s like, oh, well that’s Betty Gilpin. Betty’s Mary Todd Lincoln is very different than Cole’s, but it is anchored in exactly the same stuff, which is fearlessness and, more importantly, truth. Betty’s the most committed actor I have ever worked with, and that’s what’s so fun about it: If she’s going to sink her teeth in as much as Cole did, you kind of can’t go wrong. There’s no formula for who can do Mary, and who knows, but if there were to be, it would be about who’s fearless and ridiculous and truthful and surprising.
Oh, Mary! director Sam Pinkleton with the show’s writer and original star, Cole Escola.
Betty, what’s been exciting for you about finding your own way into this part?
So much of Cole’s beautiful writing immediately tailors itself to the person playing Mary—whoever that specific, complicated, stupid, yearning, dreaming person is—and all the things that inspire them: it’s old Hollywood, it’s regional-theater-dressing-room delusion, it’s sprinting from your own demons while screaming insisting on your own brilliance. It’s both Cole’s DNA and any actor off the street. Really any creative person can relate to what they write about.
Sam, what has surprised you about Betty’s performance?
Betty came in with such a raw, unapologetic, heartbreaking need for the character. There are moments in her show that I think are completely devastating. Within three seconds of being on stage, she’s hissing and screaming like an animal, and I think for anyone who’s like, oh, I love Betty as—to use her own language—the moms with her arms crossed on Netflix, it’s like, no, she’s a creature. The first day that we were working together, I texted the stage manager from across the room and said, “She’s weirder than Cole,” which I didn’t think was available.
After Gilpin, above, completes her run as Lincoln, Tituss Burgess will take over the role.
Betty, what has rehearsing and performing the show so far taught you about it that you didn’t know as a fan?
Chris Renfro and Phillip James Brannon were the two other new actors with me, and I wasn’t expecting to fall so deeply in love during such a fast paced insanely terrifying experience. Bianca Leigh and Tony Macht, too—every time I get overwhelmed by the fear and joy of my dream coming true, I just look across the stage at whatever perfect scene partner is standing across from me, and say Cole’s ridiculous words to them, and remember that that’s all I need to do. It’s the most fun I’ve ever had in my life.
Adam Rathe is Town & Country’s Deputy Features Director, covering film, theater, books, travel, art, philanthropy, and a range of other subjects.
