Video: Bonnie Milligan's Life Just Got Better with a Tony Nomination

It is Tony Day, you've been pinned

Oh my gosh! They say you got pinned. Yeah, yeah. Sorry. Bad by Bernie? Anybody

Just me? Oh yeah, totally. Oh no no no, I think all the millions of fans watching at Broadway World are like, oh she's got it

Yeah, she's got it! How surreal is it all? I mean… It feels like I'm in a crazy awesome dream

You know what I mean? I mean it's been a lot of years of hard work and hardship and loss and lots of things

so it's also very real. And I feel the weight of it all, but also the joy of what has come to this day

And I carry that all with me, and it just makes it even more special and beautiful

Because what made this show so special for you, being a part of it

I think that it's this healing, beautiful little gift of a show

We all lost something during the pandemic, and this show is about saying we don't know

how much time we have, and let's make what time we have joyful, and work, and worth it

you know? Like, let's do something with it. And I feel it from the audiences, I feel they have all the emotions

They laugh, they cry, they leave hopeful and wanting to do something, which is like really

exciting to get to be a part of. Take me back to the Youngest Bonnie, that first show you did in the backyard or in your basement

What was that show, and what would older Bonnie say to younger Bonnie now? Well, I sang my whole life, but the first show-show I did was when I was ten years old

in fifth grade. It was a Christmas play. It was like a fake, who knows who wrote that script, I've never heard of it

But it was about an elf who saved Christmas, and I got to be that elf

And I remember I kept a journal, and that was the day I was like, well, I finally know

what I'm going to do with my life. I was ten. And I'm going to act

It was just like, I just knew that I was like, this is what I want to do

I always knew I loved singing, but to like get to become a different character and get

to- I had a very- I think of the song At the Ballet from A Chorus Line, and that was very

me with theater. It was like I escaped any circumstance I had that was hard, and I got to go be someone

else for a little while. And I'm here now, and that's crazy and awesome

I think she would say, yeah, duh, because she was ready to do it

Along the way, we kind of lost that confidence, but at ten, she would have expected it

But me knowing along the way where I lost that confidence a lot, coming back and forth

it's really cool to tell her, you know what, girl, we did do it. We did

You've been pinned today! I got pinned