Diego Andres Rodriguez, Angelica Chéri, Hannah Cruz and the Rescues Among Variety’s 10 Broadway Stars to Watch for 2025

With a CV filled with unpredictable genre-benders, director Blain-Cruz has a reputation for shows that push theater into new shapes. After making her Broadway debut in 2022 with a revival of “The Skin of Our Teeth,” Thornton Wilder’s most surreal and experimental play, she’s back this season with a piece that has everyone’s attention: “Purple Rain,” featuring the iconic songs of Prince in a new adaptation written by Tony and Pulitzer winner Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. Both the scale and the possible reach of the project thrill her. “The potential of that connection, with audiences around the world, is really moving to me,” she says. “As a director, I want to talk to everybody, you know?”

Agent
Derek Zasky, WME
Influences
Her family (“We love a party”), Ralph Lemon, Prince, “El Topo”

“It’s a family legend, but it’s fantasticalized,” the writer says of “Wanted,” a new musical inspired by the stories she heard from her grandmother about distant relatives: two outlaw sisters passing for white in the Wild West. The production is making its way to Broadway, and Chéri, a writer on the MGM+ series “Godfather of Harlem,” is also at work on the play “Phenomenal Woman, Maya Angelou,” backed by the Angelou estate. “It was August Wilson’s work that empowered me, as a Black woman, to know that my life and my family are worthy of being canonized in American theater,” she says. “And besides, we all love an outlaw story!”

Agent
Beth Blickers, Michael Moore Agency; Halle Mariner, Nathan DeRemer, IAG
Managers
Jonathan Baruch, Jacqueline Mosher, Rain Management Group
Influences
August Wilson; Hans Zimmer; her father, David Nutt

“As a kid I would stand on the free throw line for basketball, and I’d be weeping,” the actor remembers with a laugh. Performing gave her a chance to channel all that emotion. And now, after making her Broadway debut in “Suffs,” she’s landed a couple jobs sure to give her even more opportunities to act. Earlier in the year, Cruz scored a plum role in Richard Linklater’s starry “Merrily We Roll Along” movie. And this fall, she’ll co-star with Lea Michele and Aaron Tveit in the much-anticipated revival of “Chess,” a show of which she’s long been a fan. “‘One Night in Bangkok’ was probably one of the most played songs on my iPod growing up!” she says.

Agent
Katie Britton, Peri Ganbarg, Buchwald
Managers
Julien Tacchini, Ken Lee, Brillstein Entertainment Partners
Influences
Patti LuPone, Winona Ryder, Mary-Louise Parker

With the big new Broadway musical “The Queen of Versailles” opening this fall and a recent West End hit likely coming to New York (“The Fear of 13”), writer Ferrentino is keeping busy. That’s on top of the five projects she’s developing at Netflix (including the movie of her play “Amy and the Orphans,” which she’ll direct), plus a new musical with Iron & Wine, and an adaptation of “The Artist” gearing up for a second U.K. run. That’s a lot of musicals. “I’ve really gotten hooked on the form itself,” she says. “It’s so collaborative, and you’re able to say things in bigger, bolder, louder brushstrokes than you can in any other form.”

Agent
Ally Shuster, CAA
Manager
Cullen Conly, Anonymous Content
Influences
Tina Howe; W.H. Auden; her father, John Ferrentino

Last season, the WME agent shepherded his client Kimberly Belflower to Broadway with her buzzy play “John Proctor is the Villain” — and made the unusual move of releasing the rights for school productions pre-Broadway to build grassroots interest. “These days, we’ve got to be creative about elevating the work of unique, inspiring artists,” Finkle says. This season and beyond, he’s looking forward to big things from clients including director Tim Jackson (Broadway-bound West End success “Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York)”) and musical duo the Bengsons (Edinburgh hit “Ohio”), and the IP deal that paired Meg Wolitzer’s novel “The Interestings” with a starry creative team. “There’s a lot of very cool new chapters starting,” Finkle says.

Influences
Bob Fosse, Jerome Robbins, August Wilson

“It’s a new step, and it’s this huge thing,” the actor says of his Broadway debut in “Punch,” the acclaimed new James Graham play in which Harrison plays the real-life Jacob Dunne, who killed a man with a single punch. Harrison has been in plays before — most recently “The Coast Starlight” at Lincoln Center Theater in 2023 — but since then he’s grabbed attention with screen work in shows like “Daisy Jones & the Six” and Hulu’s upcoming true-crime adaptation “Murdaugh: Death in the Family.” It turns out that coming to Broadway is like coming home. “It feels like the wonderful community I’ve been a part of all along,” he says.

Agent
Lindsay Porter, Gersh
Manager
Sally Ware, Sugar23
Influences
Disney’s “Robin Hood,” “Batman Begins,” Tom Waits

For a playwright as prolific and award-winning as Hunter (“The Whale”), it was only a matter of time before one of his shows landed on Broadway or in the West End. This fall, both are happening at the same time: Not long after his play “Clarkston” opens in the West End, headlined by Joe Locke, Hunter’s latest, “Little Bear Ridge Road,” will hit Broadway with Laurie Metcalf in the lead. It’s “one of my most overtly comic plays,” he says, and while the production may be spare, the ideas are anything but. “Nowadays I’m really interested in creating theater that does the most using the least,” he says. “It only has four people in it, but the themes are as big as the universe.”

Agent
Derek Zasky, WME
Managers
Matt Rosen, Harry Lengsfield, Untitled
Influences
Thornton Wilder, Arvo Pärt, his Idaho upbringing

After almost a decade co-producing shows on both sides of the Atlantic, the married principals of AF Creative Media step up next spring to lead produce the Broadway transfer of “Giant,” a West End hot ticket about Roald Dahl. For the Lees, it’s a debut made even splashier because it comes with the announcement of their first-look deal with London’s storied Royal Court Theatre. With a background in content creation, the Lees also have a significant social media profile (128K on Instagram) chronicling their life as producers and parents of three kids. It’s been a boon for investor relations. “There’s a temperature check on both sides, and I think it’s really attracted the right people to our orbit,” Dayna Lee says.

Attorneys
Kevin Hess, Daniel Watkins, Levine Plotkin
Influences
“Our parents, our kids, each other”

Given that their songs have provided the scores for TV shows from “One Tree Hill” to “Grey’s Anatomy,” it’s fair to say that the indie pop-rock band is no stranger to making music for dramatic moments. So it should come as no surprise that the new Broadway-bound adaptation of “The Lost Boys,” the Rescues’ first musical theater outing, has been a perfect fit. “I have no idea how we haven’t always been doing this,” says band member AG, who is one-third of the trio alongside Kyler England and Gabriel Mann. With the project giving them the chance to make “smart-meets-heart” songs that run the gamut from anthemic to intimate, the band would love to make writing for Broadway a regular thing. “We have been bitten and smitten,” says England.

Agent
Kevin Lin, CAA; Dan North, FAM
Attorneys
Liz Paw, Liza Montesano
Influences
Indigo Girls (all three), Billy Joel (Mann), Joni Mitchell (England)

“You couldn’t beat the free press,” says the actor, chuckling over the meme he became when theater fans shared footage of his curtain call in the West End smash “Evita” wearing only black trunks and splatters of multicolored paint. That high-profile starring role came after Rodriguez caught director Jamie Lloyd’s attention as an understudy in “Sunset Blvd.” on Broadway. It’s been a speedy rise to theater-world prominence for a young Texas native barely a year out of college. “This is a moment in life that will be so hard to ever replicate,” he says.

Agent
Randi Goldstein, Gersh
Managers
Duncan Millership, Stephen Simbari, Anonymous Content
Influences
Jamie Lloyd, Los Lonely Boys, Lin-Manuel Miranda