Why Jay-Z’s Big Tonys Duet With Alicia Keys Was Offstage

It drew one of many greatest roars of the night time on the Tony Awards: Alicia Keys was performing a medley from her Broadway musical “Hell’s Kitchen” on Sunday when she walked out of the auditorium and was proven becoming a member of Jay-Z on a marble staircase for “Empire State of Mind,” their 2009 love track to New York City.

“Had to do one thing loopy — it’s my hometown!” Keys mentioned because the cameras adopted her strolling out of the auditorium on the David H. Koch Theater in Lincoln Center. A video display screen onstage lower to Jay-Z, the Brooklyn-born rapper and mogul, as he carried out from the curved marble staircase simply exterior the auditorium. Keys was seen becoming a member of him.

There was a cause Jay-Z by no means appeared on the Tonys stage besides in video kind, although. In a savvy trick of the manufacturing, the reunion between two of music’s greatest stars was pretaped and punctiliously edited to seamlessly make it seem a part of the reside efficiency on Sunday night time’s Tonys telecast, in line with two individuals with data of the telecast preparations who weren’t licensed to talk publicly about them. (New York Magazine reported earlier that the phase had been pretaped.)

Live or taped, the duet turned one of many greatest moments of the night time. The Broadway crowd went wild as Jay-Z closed with, “New York City within the Tonys tonight!”