*Playbill.com has gotten reactions from fresh new Tony nominees S. Epatha Merkerson of Come Back, Little Sheba and Stew of the musical Passing Strange.        

       In the hours after nominations were announced Tuesday morning in New York by Tony Award winners Sara Ramirez and David Hyde Pierce, Playbill collected quick interviews from various nominees - many of whom were in airports or headed to airports.      

       S. Epatha Merkerson, nominated for Best Performance By a Leading Actress in a Play, commented: "I'm in Los Angeles. I'm on my way to the airport to come back to New York. I was awakened this morning. My publicist called. I guess it must have been 6 a.m. or something. I was knocked out cold, actually. I was surprised and quite excited by it. I started in the theatre, so the Tony nomination is a huge thing."      

       Stew, who picked up nods for Best Original Score, Best Book for Musical, Best Performance By a Featured Actor in a Musical and Best Orchestrations, with Heidi Rodewald, said: "I just woke up a short time ago. I sleep when I can, so I just turned off all the ringers and just slept. My girlfriend told me the news, and the 87,000 messages that were on my cell phone. I got calls from Europe and the West Coast.       

       "But it's great. It's not exactly what a rock-and-roll club rat would expect to happen to him at age 46. I've been taking this thing week by week, and it just keeps getting more incredible."