Bowen Yang Is Broadway's Next Mary Todd Lincoln — And the Ninth Star to Take On 'Oh, Mary!'

Bowen Yang is headed to Broadway — and he's stepping into one of the gayest roles in recent theater history.

Producers announced this week that Yang will star as Mary Todd Lincoln in Cole Escola's Oh, Mary! for a 12-week run beginning September 15 at the Lyceum Theatre. He'll be the ninth performer to lead the show since it opened on Broadway in July 2024, following Escola, Betty Gilpin, John Cameron Mitchell, Jinkx Monsoon, Tituss Burgess, Jane Krakowski, Maya Rudolph, and the current star, Megan Stalter, whose run ends September 12.

That lineup alone tells the story of what Oh, Mary! has become: a rotating showcase for performers who mean something specific to gay audiences. A drag superstar. A theater icon. SNL's most well-known out cast member. The show has turned its lead role into something closer to a cultural baton than a traditional casting.

Yang, 35, was first approached about the role last summer while still on Saturday Night Live — and turned it down. “I was too yoked to that timeframe to give myself the proper runway,” he told Vulture's Jason P. Frank, as LGBTQ Nation reported. “I was not going to take a Broadway debut without the utmost seriousness and gravitas and respect.”

After leaving the SNL cast last December, he reconsidered. “It's a show that is at first about regrets, in the way that I regretted letting this offer go,” Yang said. “Mary feels trapped by her own decisions and then she understands that it is, in fact, other people's decisions that have sort of kept her in this place.”

The dark comedy, which Escola also wrote, reimagines Mary Todd Lincoln as a bitter, alcoholic wannabe cabaret star whose ambitions are thwarted by her husband and the inconvenient demands of American history. Escola won the 2025 Tony for Best Leading Actor in a Play for the role — the first nonbinary winner in that category — and director Sam Pinkleton took Best Direction.

The show has been a commercial juggernaut. It became the first show at the Lyceum to clear $1 million in weekly grosses, has shattered its own weekly box-office ceiling over a dozen times since, and recouped its full investment before any other show that season. The West End production won the 2026 Olivier Award for Best Entertainment or Comedy Play.

Yang's take on Mary will apparently lean into the character's delusions with a masculine edge. “I'm not afraid to be masculine,” he told Vulture. “Mary, having a complete delusion about her skills versus how other people perceive her, feels very male to me in a way I relate with.”

Director Pinkleton seems ready for it. “I think Bowen's Mary will be particularly intense,” he told Vulture. “Bowen's Mary might be a real viper. She will be very strong.”

In a statement, Yang credited his friendship with Escola for the opportunity — listing late-night pizzerias and “a tough production of Les Misérables sung in Dutch” among the places it has taken him — before calling the show “their deranged and profound masterpiece.” He added: “I will spend the rest of my life thanking them for the best Broadway debut a cis gay guy with limited singing ability could ask for.”

Yang joins a company that includes Phillip James Brannon, Barrett Foa, along with Bianca Leigh and Tony Macht. Meanwhile, a national tour launches September 19 in Hartford, Connecticut, led by Drag Race All Stars winner Alaska Thunderfuck and Tony winner J. Harrison Ghee.

Yang's Broadway run goes through December 6.