'Chess' Tony nominee Hannah Cruz never lets anyone know her next move

In just 23 minutes, the actress makes an indelible impression as Svetlana, the estranged wife of a chess champion, and no two of her performances are alike.

Summary

• Hannah Cruz is a 2026 Tony Award nominee for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for Chess
• She plays Svetlana — the estranged wife of a chess champion — and changes whether she loves or hates him each night
• This Tony nomination marks Cruz's first after making her Broadway debut in Suffs and earning acclaim in Off-Broadway musicals

Every move Hannah Cruz makes is strategic. During a pivotal scene in the Broadway revival of Chess between her character, Svetlana, and her estranged chess-champion husband, Anatoly (Nicholas Christopher), Cruz revealed that she moves across the stage "like a knight," tracing an L with her hand to demonstrate the chess piece's designated path. It's just one of many little details, visible and invisible, that make up Cruz's intricately layered portrayal.

It's often said that no two performances of a Broadway show are alike, but that's particularly true of Chess, centered on chess titans embroiled in personal and political conflict. Alongside Broadway A-listers like Aaron Tveit and Lea Michele in lead roles, Cruz quickly drew attention for delivering one of two versions of Svetlana on any given night. Nothing in the text changes: Anatoly always defects from their native Soviet Union to a new country — and a new woman — and Svetlana becomes an unwitting pawn for a vengeful Soviet government in his wake. What's different is whether she reacts with all-consuming lovesickness or anger.

Come May, Cruz's skillful shifts earned her a Tony Award nomination, alongside fellow first-time nominee Christopher and Bryce Pinkham, on his second career nod. She has significantly less stage time than most of her co-stars — 23 and a half minutes in Act 2, to be exact — and while she said she's always "aching for more," she's making the most of it.

"Sure, it's less of a lift, but every single minute has to count. Every second has to count," Cruz said. "That's almost more pressure."

But the true pressure for Cruz, believe it or not, came from having to sing, a discipline she developed a "complicated relationship" with amid the whirlwind run of musicals that set her star on the rise. Her debut on Hamilton's national tour in 2017 led to Off-Broadway gigs in The Connector, Only Gold, and Suffs, followed by her Broadway debut with the latter, in just over two years between 2022 and 2024.

"When something becomes your job, it changes," Cruz acknowledged, and perhaps that love-hate relationship, in some subliminal way, has made her perfectly poised to tap into all sides of the conflicted Svetlana. (That, and the fact that she's been a Chess fan since she was a teenager.) But this musical might be changing her perspective again: "I've never had a day where I was like, 'Oh, I don't want to do the show tonight. I don't want to go to work today,'" which is inevitable when you do anything for a long time," she said.

With over 200 performances under her belt since last fall, Cruz is still making new moves, which she dove into with New York Theatre Guide below.

Get Chess tickets now.

You used to listen to the Chess album on your iPod. What drew you to the show in the first place?

I don't remember why it came to me. I was such a theatre-obsessed kid that I feel like I just tried to stay on top of what was happening. I remember downloading it on LimeWire; that's my most cognizant memory.

I didn't know anything else about Chess. I had no idea what the plot was or the lore or anything about the London-to-Broadway [changes] back in the '80s. It wasn't until the audition came up that I really started to deep dive into the history of the show, but a lot of us have that music in our collective consciousness from growing up.

What resonates with you most about Chess now?

It's still the score. It's not normal that I still enjoy listening to a score outside work.

My husband [Hamilton alum Edred Utomi] listens to cast albums I'm doing constantly, and sometimes I have to be like, "I actually can't hear that right now." But with Chess [...] I could listen to that score over and over again for the rest of my life and not get sick of it.

Having made your name in musicals, why were you reluctant to take this role?

My passion has always been acting, and I have found in the past that singing can get in the way of that. If I wake up one day and I don't have a part of my range, or I'm feeling crackly or crunchy, or my voice is just not where I want it to be, and I find that I can't go to work because of that, it really frustrates me because I just want to go there and tell the story.

With Chess, from the jump, we made all the keys really comfortable for me. [...] This is the first job where the singing has not really stressed me out. Maybe I'm starting to like it again.

You only have 23 minutes on stage...

We timed it. I think it's 23 and a half minutes. Depending on how long Nick holds that note, that's the half.

How do you prepare for that? Does the brief stage time make the part more nerve-wracking, like you have to make the most of a little, or less, since you're not on as much?

It took me a really long time in our run to figure out what I needed to do to enter the stage running. Not even; I have to get on a moving bullet train. I'm the first person to sing on stage by themselves in the show, which is crazy to think about, and I have to come in super hot and give the audience a new perspective.

People always ask me, "What do you do in Act 1?" There's no world in which I can just be relaxing and kicking it. I have to be preparing myself mentally to enter, and getting ready, and trying to stay off my phone, and listening to my Russian opera, and listening to the show.

I was going to ask what you do during Act 1, and now I want to hear more about the Russian opera.

[Composer] Dmitri Shostakovich [...] has these beautiful piano concertos and violin pieces. There's two songs I have to listen to right before I go on stage every night. It's just a playlist called "Svetlana." My husband and I share a Spotify, and somehow the violin song is already in his top three songs of all time because I listen to it so much.

I'm sure you have a much more fleshed-out idea of Svetlana beyond what audiences see. Can you share a bit about what that is?

A lot of it has to do with Anatoly. [The song] "He Is a Man, He Is a Child" is great because it gives us some semblance of what their life was before he got so sucked into the chess world that he left his family behind. There's a lot of mental picturing there.

Lately I've been using this really specific picture of [...] the three of us in my head: him, me, and the baby. To me, it's almost like an Etch-a-Sketch image in her mind that she can't think about because it's too sensitive. At the end of the show, for "Endgame," that picture goes up in flames when he makes his decision.

You change whether you love or hate Anatoly each night. How did you devise that approach?

It was in the audition, actually, that the idea was born. [...] I played [Svetlana] very much like I loved him, because up until that point I didn't think of it any different way. And then [director] Michael [Mayer] gave me the note to be like, "Okay, now play it like you're lying to him." And I was like, "Oh, why didn't I think about that?"

It's not often that you can change intentionality and not change the text and still have it work within the conception of the show. So I asked him in rehearsal, "Is this something I could toggle with every night?" He was like, "Yeah."

How do you decide which way you go each time?

It depends. I'm a little OCD, so I like to keep the week even. I usually like to end on a "love him" [before] my day off because it's a little bit easier. The hatred is a lot. It gives me a lot of neck tension.

It's kind of what I have that day in me, but sometimes, if it's been an emotional day for me, and I know a "love him" would be easier, I'll do a "hate him" just to make my life harder.

You and Edred were on Broadway at the same time earlier this year. Did it change your routine?

Not really. He just ended his run, so now we're getting used to him not being there, which honestly I don't like. I wish he was back because it was really nice to be on somewhat of the same schedule.

We always joked that I'm on stage for 23 minutes; he's maybe off stage for 23 minutes. I got to see his final show, and I was reminded of how physical he is. I don't know how he did that eight times a week. [...] But I will say, it's been nice having someone to hold down the fort at home.

We have this teeny little kitten. She's 9 months old, and now she's such a daddy's girl. It's actually breaking my heart because she's so obsessed with him, and it's like I don't exist.

How ironic, because isn't the cat's name Svetlana?

Correct. [...] I got her during previews, and Lea was like, "You have to name her Svetlana. She's a Russian cat." It's quite perfect, and she'll always be a token of this time.

In other interviews, you said Edred taught you to play chess when you joined the show. Have you gotten better since?

No. I need to play more. We played a lot leading up to rehearsals and during rehearsals. He would literally put on "Endgame" part one from Chess in concert. [...] He got me this beautiful chess set for opening that we haven't used.

But I'm really excited to play again because I really do enjoy it, and I want to play more people. My husband is good, and I started scaring him a bit as we started playing — I was getting better. So I want to continue. But I can play on Chess.com. I can play against Svetlana too, so I have to do that.

That's right, you and your co-stars have avatars on there!

Yeah. Their chats back, their responses, are very character-driven, which is so funny.

What does Svetlana say?

Oh, she's very moody and very existential. Stakes couldn't be higher.

Get Chess tickets now.

This interview has been condensed and edited for length and clarity.

Photo credit: Chess on Broadway. (Photos by Matthew Murphy)