Johnson County 19-year-old is up for a Tony Award for debut role in Broadway musical
Justin Cooley’s fledgling acting career just became the stuff Broadway musicals are written about: Teenager from Kansas gets nominated for a Tony Award in his first Broadway role.
The Overland Park 19-year-old, a graduate of Olathe East High School, is up for best featured actor in a musical for his role in “Kimberly Akimbo,” which pulled in eight nominations, including best musical, on Tuesday.
Cooley plays Seth, described by The New York Times as an “anagram-obsessed, Elvish-speaking, sweetly weird high school student.”
The Tonys will be presented on Sunday, June 11.
“It feels truly, truly astounding. I keep realizing every five minutes that I just got a Tony nomination,” Cooley said, according to iHeart Radio Broadway.
“It’s so early in my career and I just graduated high school two years ago, so I feel like it’s really a testament to how much I’ve changed and how much I’ve worked creating this show and I’ve really poured my heart into it.
“I feel so honored that people have received that!”
Cooley told The Star in 2021 that he never planned to be an actor. But friends pushed him to audition for the school’s production of “Hairspray” when Black students were needed for the musical that tackles race relations.
From that point on, the acting honors poured in — Starlight Theatre’s Blue Star Award for musical theater students in area high schools, and then a national Jimmy Award from the Broadway League, which came with a $3,000 scholarship.
“I honestly was just awestruck. My heart stopped a little bit,” he told The Star. “I’d known what Jimmy Awards were throughout high school, but I just never, ever thought it was something I would even be able to be a part of.”
Before he got involved in theater, Cooley sang in choirs. His theater teacher at Olathe East, Edward Shafer, told The Star in 2021 how impressed he was with Cooley on and off the stage —“one of a kind.”
“For as talented as he is, he’s just as great as a person, student and leader. … I can’t think of anybody who embodies more of what we want to instill in our younger kids,” Shafer said.
He described Cooley as small of stature, and watched him become bigger than life when he auditioned for the role of a bully in the school’s production of “Heathers: The Musical.”
“He came out and was so convincing in this role as a bully that it felt like I had no choice but to cast him. I could totally believe him in a role that is so unlike himself,” Shafer said
After graduation, Cooley went to Texas Christian University to major in musical theater. He recently told The New York Times that he was moving into his dorm at school when he got a call about a role in an off-Broadway musical. The casting director had seen Cooley at the Jimmy Awards and thought he’d be perfect for this show.
It was “Kimberly Akimbo,” a musical set in 1999 about a teenage girl in suburban New Jersey with a funny, dysfunctioanl family — and a rare genetic condition that ages her four times faster than normal. The New Yorker called it “howlingly funny.”
Cooley’s character, Seth, is Kimberly’s best friend.
“Cooley was an 18-year-old Kansan who had never been to New York, let alone seen a Broadway show, and he had never even worked on a stage production alongside grown-ups,” the Times wrote.
But Cooley grabbed the chance and moved to New York. And “Kimberly Akimbo” eventually moved to Broadway.
“This is not the path I thought I was on,” Cooley told the Times.
He isn’t the only Tony nominee this year with Kansas City ties. Broadway and music producer Evan McGill from Kansas City received two nominations as a producer for “Parade” (best revival of a musical) and “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window” (best revival of a play).
This story was originally published May 3, 2023 at 1:04 PM.
.jpg)