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Listen up fives, a ten is coming. Mary Todd Lincoln is getting a new face on Broadway and it’s none other than actress, comedian, and famed blonde Jane Krakowski.
The 30 Rock and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt star will join the cast of Oh, Mary! for an eight-week engagement from Oct. 14 through Dec. 7. This marks yet another Broadway extension for the Tony-award winning play —which has become a cultural sensation.
“Thank you, Cole, for giving us this madcap work of genius, directed to perfection by Tony Award winner Sam Pinkleton,” said Krakowski in a press release. “I am so honored to slip into the bratty curls previously worn by (my Tony Award winning zaddy) Cole Escola, (my sister wife) Betty Gilpin, (my comedy brother) Tituss Burgess, and (mother) Jinkx Monsoon.”
Created by comedian Cole Escola and directed by Sam Pinkleton, Oh, Mary! is an irreverent and completely historically-innaurate retelling of the life of Mary Todd Lincoln in the days before the assisnation of her husband, President Abraham Lincoln. While the bottle curls mirror the historical, that’s where the accuracy ends. This Mary is horny, drunk, and completely belligerent about her dream of being a cabaret star.
“One of my favorite things in writing is tent poles,” Escola told Rolling Stone in 2024, as the show completed previews. “It’s why Christmas comes up so much in my work, because everybody knows what Christmas is and all the expectations that are attached, but then I can fill in a bunch of the blanks. It’s basically Mad Libs. So I felt that way with Mary Todd Lincoln. She’s not a big personality. It’s not like she’s some diva who we hear all these stories about. So it’s funny to me to be like, ‘Oh, what if she was an idiot?’ Like, ‘Abraham Lincoln’s wife was blank,’ and I get to fill in the space.”
The show first opened in February 2024 at the off-broadway Lucille Lortel Theater. Since its premiere, it has remained the ticket-to-get, eventually transferring to Broadways’ Lyceum Theater. In 2025, Escola took home the Tony Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play and Pinkleton took home the Tony Award for Best Director. (Pinkleton is currently directing Can I Be Frank, the off-Broadway show based on the life of queer comedian Frank Maya.) Krakowski has been nominated for a Tony Award three times, and won the statue for Best Featured Actress in a Musical in 2003. Her performances as Mary will mark her first time on a Broadway stage since the 2016 revival of She Loves Me.
“From the first time I watched Oh, Mary! downtown I thought, ‘how do I get myself on that stage in this role?’” Krakowski added. “After watching Cole take the NYC taxi ride uptown and now worshipping it four times more, I made it! Oh, Mary! is a comedic work of genius that ends up in my dream version of 7 minutes in heaven.”
