Thursday, March 28, 2024
“This was adorable. Thanks for the smile this morning!” –Gus Kenworthy
“2019 Tony Awards Host RIGHT HERE!” –Kristen Marie
“Your mom should get an Emmy for keeping her fabulous totally straight face throughout all of this.” –Cindy Wallach
“EXCELLENT! Very impressed with the creative costume/staging choices!” –Seth Rudetsky
A flurry of trips back and forth from home to Grandma’s garage for props, numerous costume and set changes inside Mom’s car and dozens of iPhone video clips filled Rockville Centre native Colin O’Leary’s days leading up to 2019.
The musical theater fanatic had vowed to complete the sequel to his widely shared YouTube video, “O’Leary Car Ride Showtunes 2018,” before the new year. In the videos, O’Leary, 20, acts and lip-syncs along to Broadway hits in the car while his mother, lifelong village resident Carol O’Leary, keeps a deadpan expression while driving through town.
With more than 250,000 views since it was released in October, the debut video got attention, scoring the mother-son duo an invitation to a live taping of “Will & Grace” last month.
“I didn’t think it was going to get this big at all, where I’d be flown to California,” O’Leary said. “When the first video became a big deal, I was like, ‘I have to do another one,’ so I really went into the second one.”
O’Leary’s love of musical theater was sparked when he watched “The Wizard of Oz” as a child and grew as he acted in shows at the John A. Anderson Recreation Center, the St. Agnes Cathedral School and Kellenberg Memorial High School.
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