In 2018, Sky Lakota-Lynch had his first brush with the Tony Awards — almost. Days before his Broadway debut in Dear Evan Hansen, the cast of the musical was set to perform the In Memoriam number at that year’s Tonys. Lakota-Lynch felt he simply couldn’t partake.

“I didn’t do it because I was so scared for my Broadway debut, and I was like, ‘I don’t think that I should do this because I’m just so petrified,’” he says. Fast-forward to this year, and he’s officially making a splash at his second go with the Tony Awards.

Lakota-Lynch is a first-time Tony Award nominee for his performance in the Broadway musical adaptation of The Outsiders, taking on the beloved role of Johnny Cade. No longer petrified, he is still processing the honor: “I’ve never had a Tony nomination before, so I don’t know what comes with it. I’m so used to sitting on my couch and watching Beat Bobby Flay, so it’s wild to be thrust into it.”

Speaking to Broadway Direct from his dressing room at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, Lakota-Lynch says receiving a nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical took him by total surprise. “You want to reach for the stars and dream your dreams, but you just never know if it’s actually going to come true. And it’s wild that it did come true.”

Hailing from Philadelphia, his introduction to musical theater came by way of the Rent movie, which led him to join his high school girlfriend’s acting class. “I didn’t get up once,” he says. “I failed the acting class because she was the only reason I took it.”

It took time, but at the advice of his teacher, he auditioned for the school’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and never looked back. “I just found my community. It wasn’t necessarily the ‘doing.’ It was the community of people. It was the outsiders. It was the people who weren’t judging me anymore,” he says. “I felt seen.”

Not only was 2018 when he made his Broadway debut, but it also was the year he began his six-year journey with The Outsiders. At the time, he was playing the comedic side character Jared Kleinman in Dear Evan Hansen, and his instinct was to audition for the role of Two-Bit in the initial workshop of The Outsiders. However, the show’s director in the early stages of the show, Liesl Tommy, encouraged him to read for Johnny instead.

“A couple of days later, I got the call that I got Johnny. It was the first workshop I’d ever done, so I didn’t know how they worked. I didn’t know how fast you have to learn the music. And Liesl gave me grace, man. She really was like, ‘I see this. I see it in your eyes. You are this character.’”

When Danya Taymor boarded the project as the show’s director, Lakota-Lynch had to audition again, and sure enough, Taymor reassured him that he was the musical’s Johnny. A fellow Tony nominee this year for her direction of The Outsiders, she and Lakota-Lynch became great friends throughout the show’s road to Broadway.

“I’ve never had anything like this at any job beyond the theater. I’ve worked in restaurants. I’ve worked in clothing stores, I’ve never had someone who truly listens and I listen back,” he says. “We’ve collaborated on a lot of things outside of The Outsiders, and one day we hope to make a movie together after all this and get paid,” he adds with a laugh.

Last summer they were sitting in Bryant Park before seeing Back to the Future: The Musical together when Taymor revealed to Lakota-Lynch that they had secured the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre for The Outsiders.

“We both were just jumping up and down and holding each other and crying. And then we went and saw Back to the Future, and we couldn’t pay attention because we’re just like, ‘We’re going to be on Broadway. People actually like our show.’”

Playing Johnny, the traumatized but warmhearted character audiences came to love in the book and the 1983 film, Lakota-Lynch finds himself thanking the character daily. “He means the world to me. I think this is the first time I’ve ever gotten to play someone close to myself, my unguarded self.”

The Outsiders novel has impacted many students across generations, and so was the case for a young Lakota-Lynch. “I struggled with a lot of learning disabilities, dyslexia being one of them,” he says. He fell in love with The Outsiders, which was the first book he read in full. Much of this, he says, was due to the people he read the novel with in behavioral classes, many of whom ended up passing away early in life.

“I had friends die throughout my life, and I’m still young. My middle school came [to see the show] and they brought me my old yearbook. And I looked at it and I was just sitting there crying. I was like, ‘Wow, a lot of these people aren’t here anymore.’”

A pivotal moment in the show is the song “Stay Gold,” inspired by the iconic line said by Johnny in the novel. Performing that moment resonates with him nightly. “I sing ‘Stay Gold’ for the people we lose. And that’s why I think Susie’s [S.E. Hinton, The Outsiders’s author] message is so important — because it shines a light on kids who are in the shadows.”

With Tony night coming up next month, Lakota-Lynch is preparing to attend as a nominee with his mom by his side. “I think I’ll just be thinking, ‘I made you proud, Mom, and I did all right for myself.’ And also, may the best man win, because it’s a category full of beautiful people.”

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