‘Oh, Mary!’ Star Cole Escola to Exit Broadway Smash—but May Return

Cole Escola, the playwright and star of Broadway smash, Oh, Mary!, is stepping away from the show—and their critically acclaimed role of Mary Todd Lincoln—for an unspecified length of time.

Betty Gilpin, the Emmy-nominated star of Glow, will step into the role on Jan. 21, 2025 for a limited eight-week run. Tickets for the show are now on sale through June 28, 2025, even though a show source told the Daily Beast that it remains “TBD” who will play Mary after Gilpin’s run ends, adding that Escola could return to the role themselves.

The news comes just a week after it was announced that Oh, Mary!, directed by Sam Pinkleton, had recouped its entire production costs on Broadway, becoming the first show of the 2024-2025 Broadway season to achieve the milestone.

After an off-Broadway run at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, Oh, Mary! opened on Broadway on July 11, 2024 at the Lyceum Theatre, where it became the first show in the theater’s 121-year history to gross more than $1 million in a single week.

Oh, Mary! has since broken its own box office record nine times, and has become a go-to Broadway night out for a host of celebrities including Billy Crystal, Tom Hanks, Bowen Yang, Anne Hathaway, Goldie Hawn, Brie Larson, Andrew Garfield, Anna Wintour, Jessica Chastain, Jennifer Aniston, Kerry Washington, and Madonna.

The Daily Beast understands that Escola may return to the show some time in the spring, but no firm dates or plans have yet been made or announced.

However, a source indicated to the Daily Beast that Escola was stepping away to take a break from the “intense” demands of playing Mary, and also to focus on other projects they have had to put on the back-burner as the success and popularity of Oh, Mary! has mushroomed.

“It’s an intense role and they’ve been doing it for almost a year,” the source told the Daily Beast. “They also have some projects they’d committed to when they thought this was just going to be a short Off Broadway run, so they want to find time to focus on those for a bit.”

“I have worshipped at the altar of Cole for years, but seeing their billion layered brilliance in Oh, Mary! was a new plane of demented genius I didn’t know was scientifically possible,” Gilpin said in a statement. “I am beyond honored to step in so that Cole can get back to tending their neglected passions: fracking and skincare. Diving in with the perfect Sam Pinkleton to play Mary will be one of the single greatest joys of my life, and I will say that to my two daughters’ faces.”

A show spokesperson said Escola—last seen resplendent atop a giant pink flamingo at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade—was not available for comment, and could not themselves respond to questions about why Escola was exiting the show, and if or when they would return to it.