English actor Jak Malone delivered a powerful message about accepting transgender people for who they are during the 2025 Tony Awards.
Malone took the stage at Radio City Music Hall in New York City Sunday night to accept the award for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical for his role as MI5 employee Hester Leggatt in the Broadway production of Operation Mincemeat. After thanking a long list of colleagues and collaborators, including the show’s creators David Cumming, Felix Hagan, Natasha Hodgson, and Zoë Roberts, as well as his partner Jasmine, Malone pivoted to a message he’s been proudly trumpeting for a while now.
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“The last thing I wanted to say is this,” he said. “Eight times a week, I walk out on that stage and tell the audience that I’m a woman. I’m not one, and I only convey it through simple adjustments to posture, voice, and energy. But night after night, audiences believe in Hester. They weep for her, they invest in her, they love her for her old romantic heart.”
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“If you watched our show and found yourself believing in Hester, well then I am so glad to tell you, intentionally or otherwise, you might have just bid farewell to cynicism, to outdated ideas, to that rotten old binary, and opened yourself up to a world that is out there in glorious technicolor and isn’t going away anytime soon,” Malone added to applause from the crowd of Broadway luminaries.
@mincemeatbway Agent Jak Malone accepts the Tony Award® for Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical
To Hester Leggatt, the timeless inspiration, adding a Tony® alongside the plaque and Olivier that we dedicate to you
#OperationMincemeat #Broadway #BroadwayShow #TonyAwards #musicaltheatre #theatretok #JakMalone #musical
Following his acceptance speech, Malone, who attended the ceremony in eye makeup and red lipstick, explained to Playbill why he felt the need to speak out and how others can be better trans allies.
“I’m just a firm believer in taking people at face value and accepting people for their vibes,” he said. “It’s such a basic term, but accept people for what they bring — for what they bring to you. Don’t worry about these preconceived — this old stuff that we’re supposed to be scared of. That’s not what this is about.”
“Accept people for their vibes,” he continued, “and once you’ve done that, once you get to know people and you care about these people, that is the first step in becoming an ally and going ‘Well, actually, now that I have these wonderful people that I care about and I know that nobody’s a threat and all of that was so stupid, now I need to speak up. I need to raise my voice and I need to talk about how wonderful these people are and how they deserve nothing but the best.’ And that’s what I’m so glad I got to go out there and do tonight. Because night after night, people go, ‘Yeah, that’s a woman.’ And I’m not and I never claimed to be. But if you can believe it in the theater and it’s safe there, it’s safe outside too.”
Malone, who originated the role of Hester in Operation Mincemeat in 2019 and has played the character and others in the Off-West End, West End, and Broadway productions of the show, has been a vocal ally of the trans and nonbinary community for years. In 2023, he spoke out against former U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s anti-trans rhetoric and policies.
“Trans and nonbinary people make up a tiny percentage of the population. This isn’t a real issue,” Malone wrote in an October 2023 X post. U.K. conservative leaders, he wrote, were “grabbing this disgusting rhetoric with both hands to try and deflect from their very real failure and corruption. Don’t be taken in. Get them out.”
Last year, Malone performed his one-person show, Gender? I Hardly Know Her… at London’s Brasserie Zedel, consisting entirely of show tunes written for female characters. In addition to his Tony win, his performance in Operation Mincemeat has earned Malone a Lawrence Oliver Award, a Drama Desk Award, and a Dorian Theater Award.
Here are some more LGBTQ+ moments from the Tony Awards.
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