The Broadway comedy Oh, Mary! is an intentionally ridiculous reimagining of first lady Mary Todd Lincoln. It portrays her as having become addicted to alcohol, not because of the Civil War, but because she’s desperately yearning to become a cabaret star. For playwright and actor Cole Escola, the show is deeply personal.

“This play is about a woman with a dream that no one around her understands. A dream that the whole world is telling her is stupid and doesn’t make any sense. And I feel that way,” Escola says.

A native of Clatskanie, Ore., Escola describes their hometown as “1,500 people, lots of trees, and nothing much else.” Escola never imagined they’d one day star in a Broadway show.

“I was like, ‘Oh, OK, so if I want to be an actor, I’m going to have to go to school and learn how to move less gay and talk less gay and play these boring boy parts,’ ” they say. “And I was, like, I don’t think I want to do that.”

After moving to New York City about 20 years ago, Escola became involved in the city’s cabaret and alt comedy scenes. One day, while walking around Lincoln Center, their mind drifted towards the president’s widow.

“I had the thought: What if Abraham Lincoln’s assassination wasn’t such a bad thing for Mary Todd?” Escola says. “And it was just an idea that tickled me so much.”

Escola began to imagine a “second chapter” for Mary Todd Lincoln, an idea that evolved slowly over 12 years. In 2024, Oh, Mary!, starring Escola in the title role, debuted off-Broadway. It’s since transferred to Broadway, where it received five Tony nominations.

“I can’t believe that my big break came from doing what I wanted to do, like not compromising,” they say. “June 21st is my last performance, and I’m slowly starting to wrap my head around the whole experience and I will say I’ve been crying a lot.”

Interview highlights

On being surprised by the success of Oh, Mary!‘

I always assumed that if I ever had any sort of “real career success” I would be the gay best friend on a sitcom. … I mean, who would ever think, like, “OK, Cole, a play where you’re in drag playing Mary Todd Lincoln as a wannabe cabaret star — I think you should pursue this as a big Broadway hit.” I mean, absolutely not. We were, like, over the moon that we got eight weeks at the Lucille Lortel Theatre. And I still think that’s really cool. I can’t believe that we did get that. But I still can’t really wrap my head around it.

On handing off Oh, Mary! to Betty Gilpin and Tituss Burgess to star in the show for limited engagements in 2025 while Escola took a break from the role

I was scared. I was afraid for all the reasons. Like, what if they don’t quite get it? I was just scared because I didn’t know what to expect. And then the way that they both embraced this role, like, it was their dream role — is so satisfying. … As someone who was always begging their friends to like, “Please be in my movie,” like, “Can we please make this little movie? Can we please put a skit together for the talent show?” To now have two of my favorite actors in the world, Betty Gilpin and Tituss Burgess, who are both so deep and so funny, take on a role and love it as if it was given to them by Mike Nichols or George Cukor, it’s like I can’t think of a better feeling.

On being inspired by their grandma’s stories

She told this story a lot about her 10th birthday when she found out her dad had a stroke and died, working in some sort of mine in Canada. And then there was also a story about how she really couldn’t see, her eyesight was really bad, but her family couldn’t afford glasses. But then one day a doctor came to town and gave her a free pair of glasses. These aren’t great stories. It was always the way that she told them and the details and the way she disappeared into the story in the telling of it. … And just the seriousness. I’m laughing because I’m just now realizing it was a cabaret act. I’d never put that together. That was my first exposure to cabaret was hearing my grandmother with Alzheimer’s retell me stories about her childhood in Alberta, Canada.

On getting started in community theater

My first professional acting job was in a production of Grapes of Wrath. I played Winfield Joad and it was in a town 30 miles away from Clatskanie, where I grew up. And during that time, my grandmother lived in a nursing home, and it was close, and it was much, much, closer to the theater than where I lived, so some nights after rehearsals I would stay over at her nursing home. … I wasn’t sure that I was allowed to be there. Like, I knew I could visit. I was pretty sure I wasn’t allowed to spend the night, but I did anyway, and it was weird. I was lying to so many adults just so that I could be in this play. I think I lied to my mom, and I told her like, “Oh no, the play feeds us.” And meanwhile, I wasn’t eating, because I knew if I said, “I need money for food,” she would say, “Well, we can’t do that. I’m sorry, you can’t do this play.” And I lied to the adults in the play saying, like, “Oh yeah, I can stay with my grandma in the nursing home so I can [stay] late at rehearsal.”
 
On making comedy videos when they first got to New York

I was miserable. I was truly suicidal. I was bulimic. And I was walking around near Bloomingdales, and I remember I was having these thoughts about not wanting to be alive. And then I started having those thoughts, of a character’s voice, a voice not unlike my grandma and her friends. And I came up with this character, Joyce Conner, who was a really sort of cheery, innocuous middle-aged woman who was just kept having to put off her suicide because so many things kept popping up over the weekend. For some reason that was, like, this huge release valve. Like, it both allowed me to feel what I was feeling, but also relieved me from feeling burdened by what I was feeling.

Lauren Krenzel and Anna Bauman produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.

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After watching a storied comedy brand finish one of its most creatively successful seasons in recent memory, I couldn’t help but think of a pressing question:

What’s next for Saturday Night Live?

No matter how well things go on a given episode or in a given season, it isn’t long before that question re-emerges — especially given how eager some in the entertainment press have always been to pen the show’s eulogy. In a way, it’s the biggest drawback for a show that boasts the potential of reinventing itself every week.

Ironically, Saturday’s episode didn’t give many hints about the ultimate answer, despite capping SNL’s highly-hyped 50th anniversary season.

Even though Weekend Update co-host Colin Jost’s wife Scarlett Johansson hosted this year’s season finale – boosting rumors that he and onscreen partner Michael Che might announce their departure then – they didn’t, and everything unfolded in a typical fashion featuring a star who has become a regular, game contributor. (Though Jost did hand his wife a bouquet of red roses during the final goodbye segment.)

The numbers, provided by NBC, tell a story of success: they say SNL will finish its season as the top broadcast entertainment program among viewers aged 18 to 49. (That’s a relatively youthful and ad-friendly group for TV watchers.) The network also says this season has averaged 8.2 million viewers each week across all platforms.

So, as much as some critics may still want to shade the show, SNL remains one of the most powerful brands in comedy. But following up the hype of its 50th anniversary next season may be its biggest remaining challenge.

Here’s where I think SNL stands – and questions that remain – as it wraps up one of its most successful seasons in recent memory.

What happens to Weekend Update if Jost and Che both depart after this season?

The biggest parlor game among SNL fans at the end of a season is playing “who’s leaving the cast this year?” Johansson even joked in her musical monologue that castmember Sarah Sherman was leaving, to Sherman’s mock astonishment. And the biggest rumor before Saturday’s broadcast was that Weekend Update hosts and veteran writers Jost and Che might be out the door after cementing their status as the longest-running anchors of SNL’s newscast parody.

Colin Jost and Michael Che during Weekend Update in December.

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In recent years, Update has emerged as the most reliable segment in an often-uneven show, as Che and Jost honed their oddball chemistry as an uncaring provocateur paired with a snarky guy willing to parody his own privilege. Assuming they might still leave, let me breeze past obvious successor suggestions — like castmember and frequent Update contributor Michael Longfellow — to provide a suggestion from left field: Josh Johnson, the prolific standup comic and Daily Show correspondent. It’s true that Johnson, who has built a growing fanbase with a long string of immensely popular YouTube videos, already seems to be developing a career on his own terms. But taking the reins of a comedy institution like Update could boost his work to a new level while pointing the way toward SNL’s future.

SNL made news this year beyond its comedy.

Who knew an SNL bit could spark real-life gossip about one of TV’s biggest hits? After Sherman parodied The White Lotus star Aimee Lou Wood in the sketch dubbed “The White Potus,” Wood called the portrayal “mean and unfunny” on social media and loads of coverage followed. (It didn’t help that Wood’s Lotus co-star Walton Goggins initially complimented the sketch on SNL’s Instagram page, fueling rumors of a rift between the two.)

Sarah Sherman during “The White Potus” sketch on April 12, 2025.

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And, in a separate controversy, a bit Ego Nwodim led playing a hacky standup comic during an Update segment prompted the audience to shout out a curse word in unison, unplanned. Nwodim says she eventually talked to executive producer Lorne Michaels to see if the show was going to be fined — and in a bit during Saturday’s Update playing that character again, she was a little more careful about what cues she gave the audience. But that earlier bit also produced one of the most talked-about moments of the season. Proof that SNL can still make news even when the subject isn’t its landmark anniversary.

Speculation about when or whether Lorne Michaels will leave the show now seems beside the point.

At age 80, Michaels seems like the Highlander of network television – an enduring force, forever the show’s wise and steady hand, guiding events from behind-the-scenes. However he has divided authority among his lieutenants, things seem to be working – the show produced a string of consistently good episodes in 2025, particularly in programs featuring guests hosts Jack Black and Jon Hamm. Those successes, combined with the reputation-boosting triumph of the 50th anniversary celebrations, should be enough to quiet the “when is Lorne retiring?” rumors for at least another season. (As I have said before, when the inevitable retirement does happen, if the show doesn’t end, I think Seth Meyers would be an awesome successor, or perhaps Jost.)

Despite a Kamala Harris cameo, SNL hasn’t quite figured out a consistently groundbreaking way to lampoon modern politics. But that’s okay.

It feels like a lifetime ago when then-Vice President Harris sat across from Maya Rudolph in a sketch airing just before November’s presidential election. That was also the episode that gave us a cavalcade of celebrity guest stars playing political figures, including Dana Carvey as then-President Joe Biden, Andy Samberg as Harris’ hubby Doug Emhoff and Jim Gaffigan as Harris’ running mate Tim Walz.

Maya Rudolph and then-Vice President Kamala Harris during the cold open on November 2, 2024.

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But too few of those big comedic swings seemed to hit their mark this season. Amid the shock of keeping up with the second Trump administration, SNL only intermittently captured the chaos of the times. Even the political sketches centered on James Austin Johnson’s impeccable impression of the president sometimes could feel like a transcript of the real-life POTUS’ scattershot musings — especially in Saturday’s “cold open” sketch, which satirized President Trump’s Middle East trip a day after the real-life POTUS flew back from it. (“The White Potus” sketch, its Wood impression notwithstanding, was a brilliant step up.) The lesson here: perhaps it’s time to stop expecting SNL to nail the political moment every week and give them space to find new angles.

In a world where comedy brands are increasingly built on podcasts and social media videos, SNL still matters.

As late night TV erodes in other timeslots and younger viewers desert traditional television platforms, SNL faced a season where it had to argue for its relevance while also paying tribute to an astonishing comedy legacy. (The nitpicker in me is compelled to note that SNL’s 50th anniversary technically isn’t until later this year; the show debuted on Oct. 11, 1975.) But the massive celebration surrounding its 50th anniversary season, which started last September, elevated SNL by reminding audiences what a cultural institution it truly is.

Indeed, the show’s history was too big to fit into one special, with its three-and-a-half hour prime time extravaganza in February preceded by a commemorative concert, Questlove’s brilliant documentary on the show’s musical history and a four-part docuseries on Peacock. The giant-size celebration served as a potent reminder that, frustrating as SNL’s inconsistencies can be week-to-week, there is no other program like it on American television – a live showcase for the best TV comedy featuring top performers reacting to pop culture and politics very nearly in real time.

Small wonder there’s a six-episode version of SNL planned for British TV next year.