Jeremy O. Harris reflects on Slave Play's Tony Award losses

Jeremy O. Harris didn't expect his stage show Slave Play to win any Tony Awards.

The playwright and actor has opened up about how he felt when his play was snubbed for the 2021 Tony Awards.

Slave Play, which opened on Broadway in 2019, set a record for the most nominations received by a play. However, the production failed to win a single award.

In a recent interview with Elle to discuss his directorial debut, an experimental documentary titled Slave Play. Not a Film. A Play, Jeremy said he didn't expect to win the awards.

"I put that moment in the documentary of me, thirty minutes after the Tonys were over, holding my niece's hand, talking about the (losses), because I think it would've felt disingenuous not to show that I was really sad," the playwright said. "It did really suck to not win."

Jeremy continued, "But looking back, it's like, 'Okay. It was probably going to be that.' Before the Tonys, I had told everyone that I was probably going to lose."

After a successful Broadway run, Slave Play opened at the Noel Coward Theatre in London in late June.

Elsewhere in the interview, Jeremy revealed that preparing the play, which is about topics including slavery and race, for a British audience has been "illuminating".

"It's been really cool to be in rehearsal rooms with Brits and recognise how much of their own history is untaught to them, in this pursuit of a full amnesia of colonial history," he explained. "That's been really illuminating. It's not an accident that one of the characters in this play is British, but it does become a happy accident how that Brit moves differently with a British actor in the role."