Ron Simons,
| Photo Credit: AP
Ron Simons, an actor who turned into a formidable screen and stage producer, winning four Tony Awards and having several films selected at the Sundance Film Festival, has died. He was 63.
SimonSays Entertainment, his New York-based production company said Simons died Wednesday but gave no cause or other details.
“It is with heavy hearts that we share the unexpected passing of our beloved, blessed, and highly favoured friend, Ronald Keith Simons,” the production company wrote in a statement on Facebook.
Simons won Tonys for producing Porgy and Bess, with Norm Lewis and Audra McDonald, A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, starring Jefferson Mays, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike with Sigourney Weaver, and Jitney with John Douglas Thompson.
He also co-produced “Hughie” with Forest Whitaker, “The Gin Game”, starring Cicely Tyson and James Earl Jones, “Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of The Temptations”, an all-Black production of “A Streetcar Named Desire”, the revival of “for coloured girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf” and the original work “Thoughts of a Colored Man”.
In 2022, after the first full season since the death of George Floyd reignited a conversation about race and representation in America, Simons was pleased to see Broadway offer one of its most diverse Tony slates yet.
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“I can guarantee you I have not seen this many people of colour represented across all categories of the Tony Awards,” he told The Associated Press. “I was so uplifted and impressed by that.” On the film side, Simons produced Night Catches Us, with Kerry Washington, Anthony Mackie and Wendell Pierce, Gun Hill Road with Esai Morales and Judy Reyes, Blue Caprice, starring Isaiah Washington and Tequan Richmond, and Mother of George with Danai Gurira.
