Watch Leslie Odom Jr. Lead Powerful Tony Awards 2026 In Memoriam Tribute With Rent Song

Tony-winning Hamilton star Leslie Odom, Jr. led the In Memoriam tribute June 7 at the 79th Annual Tony Awards, broadcast live from Radio City Music Hall on CBS and streamed via Paramount+. Odom, Jr. delivered a haunting rendition of "Without You"—from the late Jonathan Larson 's Pulitzer Prize-winning Rent, currently celebrating its 30th anniversary — as the names and faces of the many talented, irreplaceable artists the theatre world lost during the past year were displayed. Watch the complete In Memoriam segment in the video above. For his portrayal of Hamilton 's Aaron Burr, Odom won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical and a Grammy Award for his performance on the original cast recording. The stage and screen star was previously on Broadway in a Tony-nominated turn in the 2023 revival of Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch. Since his breakout role in Hamilton, the actor has been seen on screen in The Good Wife, Murder on the Orient Express, One Dollar, Only, Love in the Time of Corona, Central Park, Abbott Elementary, The Many Saints of Newark, and an Oscar-nominated performance in One Night in Miami... Odom, Jr. also hosted The Tony Awards Present: Broadway’s Back on CBS and can be seen in the filmed TV version of Hamilton. The actor will also make his West End debut in Hamilton later this summer. Directed by Michael Greif, Rent opened at Broadway's Nederlander Theatre April 29, 1996, following previews that began April 16. The musical received 10 1996 Tony nominations, subsequently winning four, including Best Musical. Larson's work also won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. After 16 previews and 5,123 regular performances, the production played its final show September 7, 2008. Set in Manhattan in the 1990s and inspired by Puccini’s opera La Bohème, the hit musical follows a group of young East Village artists, performers, and philosophers as they struggle through the hardships of poverty, societal discord, and the AIDS epidemic in the search for life, love, and art. A 30th anniversary concert will be held on Broadway later this year.