At the 78th Tony Awards on June 8, 2025, Sara Bareilles and host Cynthia Erivo sang “Tomorrow” from Annie during the In Memoriam tribute. The segment closed with a photograph of Bareilles’s friend Gavin Creel, and the Associated Press reported that Bareilles teared up. The reporting describes a visible reaction, not what she was thinking or why she reacted.
What happened during the tribute
The 78th Annual Tony Awards took place at Radio City Music Hall in New York City on Sunday, June 8, 2025. During the ceremony’s In Memoriam segment, Bareilles and host Cynthia Erivo performed “Tomorrow,” the song from Annie written by Charles Strouse and Martin Charnin. GRAMMY.com’s recap identifies the song and performers.
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The Associated Press account says the tribute ended on a photograph of Creel, identifies him as a friend of Bareilles, and reports that she teared up. That sequence is the clearest account of the moment described as her “breaking down”; the source does not establish a more specific explanation for her reaction.
Why Gavin Creel was included
Creel was among the Broadway community members remembered in the official Tony Awards 2025 In Memoriam. The memorial page gives the period it covered as May 21, 2024, through May 31, 2025, and says the Tony Awards joins the theatre community in remembering friends and colleagues who have died.
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Where to place the moment in context
This was part of the ceremony’s collective memorial, not an acceptance speech or a separate event. Although the segment closed on Creel’s image and the AP described him as Bareilles’s friend, the available reporting does not say that “Tomorrow” was chosen solely for him or provide a personal statement from Bareilles about her response.
The Tony Awards’ official announcement said the 2025 ceremony would air live on CBS and stream on Paramount+ in the United States. That announcement concerns the event’s original broadcast; it does not establish whether the archived telecast remains available now. The official event announcement gives the original broadcast details.
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