‘Trial by fire’: How this 19-year-old went from Olathe East to Broadway to Tony Awards

By now, 18 months into “Kimberly Akimbo,” the musical that has catapulted him to Broadway fame — and, Sunday night, as from a dream, the chance to win a Tony Award — Olathe’s 19-year-old Justin Cooley has his pre-show routine down.

It begins with meditation inside his apartment, where he lives alone on New York’s Upper West Side. One hour before the curtain rises, the Olathe East High School graduate (ninth in his 2021 class of 488) makes his way into the Booth Theatre, an Italian Renaissance landmark on Time Square’s Shubert Alley.

Boyish and lean, he stretches. He does planks for his core. He warms up his Sam Cooke-like tenor voice, gets into costume and waits as the music swells, knowing that when he steps onstage as the sweetly devoted high school friend Seth (The New York Times called his “a flawless Broadway debut”) the audience would never guess Cooley’s real journey.

The tears. The self-doubt. The self-imposed pressure to meet an opportunity that determines not just his future, but also the future of a multimillion dollar show.

“Trial by fire,” Cooley told the Star in a recent a interview. “That’s kind of been my motto for the last year and half.”

The reason is as glaring as a spotlight, its details as if taken from the movie and musical “42nd Street”: “You’re going out a youngster, but you’ve got to come back a star!”

Until Cooley was offered his current role, he had never acted in a professional play. He’d never seen a live Broadway show or been to New York City. He had no agent, no manager. He’d never had a single acting lesson. He was an 18-year-old high school graduate, excited to study musical theater, who literally had his suitcase packed for freshman orientation at Texas Christian University.

Sunday night he is set to walk the red carpet at Manhattan’s gilded United Palace theater as one of five Tony nominees vying for best actor in a featured role in a musical. “Kimberly Akimbo” is a comedy/drama about the life, friends and dysfunctional family of Kimberly, a 16-year-old whose fatal aging disease makes her look 72. It’s up for eight Tonys, including best musical.

Lin Manuel Miranda, the creator of “Hamilton,” now follows him on Instagram. Emmy-, Grammy- and Tony-winning actor Ben Platt from “The Book of Mormon,” “Dear Evan Hansen” and the “Pitch Perfect” movies, visited him after a performance. Offers for other plays and television shows have been pouring into Cooley’s manager.

“Not only is he talented,” Elin Flack said of her client, “he’s young, he’s fresh, and open, and curious. There’s been tons and tons of interest, none of which we’ve been able to accept because he’s under contract for his show for a year. He’s had lots of requests for meetings, interviews with network casting people.”

It’s a narrative that, at times, Cooley himself finds hard to believe, recalling how, in November 2021, he stood at the edge of the stage when “Kimberly Akimbo” opened off-Broadway, having belted out his moving and introspective ballad, “Good Kid.”

“I was so nervous, so nervous. I was so scared to be on a professional stage,” he said. That evening, with applause ringing out at his curtain call, he remembered thinking, “I can’t believe I did this. I can’t believe I’ve come this far in such a short time.”

No interest in theater, until …

Six years ago, Broadway and acting didn’t occupy a moment of Cooley’s thoughts.

He was a 15-year-old choir kid, a freshman at Olathe East with aims of becoming a psychologist. His father, Paul, 52, works in biomedicine. His mother, Julie, also 52, works in IT consulting. Both were athletes in school. Her: volleyball. Him: football, basketball and baseball. Cooley’s older brother, Julian, was into academics and not the arts.

As far as their collective Broadway knowledge went — Audra McDonald to “Les Miz,” Stephen Sondheim to “Sunset Boulevard”?

“None,” said Julie Cooley.

“None,” said Paul.

No albums. No tickets to musicals at Starlight Theatre, the Midland Theater or Music Hall.

“We didn’t know he could sing until he was like a sophomore,” Paul Cooley said. Yes, Justin sang around the house and he was in choir. “We never heard his true voice.”

Then, in freshman boys choir, older students looking to gin up interest in the upcoming show, “Hairspray,” made an announcement. The musical, which takes place at the dawn of the civil rights movement, needed both Black and white backup singers. They were urging students, particularly Black students, to audition.

“I was like, ‘I’m not doing that,’” Cooley remembered thinking. “‘No, that’s totally not your thing.’”

He, nonetheless, snatched a paper flyer because other kids took them. He wasn’t averse to musicals. He’d seen the television versions of “The Little Mermaid,” “The Lion King,” “Hairspray,” and, in eighth grade, Sondheim’s “Into the Woods.”

“I loved it,” Cooley said. “But I never really had the confidence to be an actor, you know, up there, alone, doing that sort of thing.”

But as other students’ excitement grew, so did his. On audition day, more than 100 classmates milled about the theater, singing and stretching. Cooley prepared a song, “It Takes Two,” a grinding saxophone and doo-wop ballad from “Hairspray,” sung in the movie by Zac Efron.

“They say it’s a man’s world/ Well that cannot be denied/But what good’s a man’s world/without a woman by your side.”

“I was going all in,” Cooley remembered until, after a few measures — yip! — his voice cracked.

“I was so embarrassed.”

He started again.

The cast list was posted. He’d won a spot in the ensemble.

Landing bigger roles

The theater program at Olathe East is huge, with 10 shows a year: three extravagant musicals, three plays, three smaller “labs,” plus a children’s show. Cooley had had a blast in “Hairspray,” so he auditioned for the next musical, “Back to the 80’s,” and then, in his sophomore year, for “The Little Mermaid.”

The roles weren’t big. He wasn’t Prince Eric, King Triton or Sebastian the calypso crab.

“I was Sea Creature Number 2,” Cooley said. “I was a squid.”

That’s all he wanted then.

“I was actively afraid of getting actual roles,” Cooley said. “My friends would be like, ‘Oh, I bet you could get Sebastian the crab in ‘Little Mermaid.’ I was, like, ‘No. no, no. I don’t want to do that.”

The idea of a career in musical theater wasn’t even in his high school brain. “It was still a hobby to me, extracurricular,” he said.

Top grades, top college, becoming a psychologist: Those were still the prime goals.

“My highest aspiration (in musical theater), I remember telling my friends, was if I just get, by my senior year, a featured ensemble role,” Cooley said. Not a leading role, not a starring role. “Like a role where I had like maybe a special costume, and I had like a name, and like I had like three lines. I thought that would be so awesome.”

But Cooley had always been a driven student, focused on doing well. To be better, he began taking voice lessons. The summer between his sophomore and junior years, he joined Musical Theater Kansas City (formerly Music Theatre for Young People of Kansas City) and landed his first feature role as an insect in “James and the Giant Peach.”

“I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this must be what all the bigwigs do, all the serious people in the theater,’” he said. That summer, he was cast as Chad, another named role, in “High School Musical.”

It was a turning point. Even now, Cooley fills his language with qualifiers, a bulwark against ego: “kind of,“ “sort of,” “in a way.”

“I think that was the first time,” he said, “that I acknowledged that, um, I kind of had some sort of gift for this, in a way.”

Entering his junior year, Cooley dug full bore into theater, nabbing leading roles in “Heathers: The Musical” and, most significant at that point, the supporting role of Dennis in the jukebox musical “All Shook Up.”

Combining Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” and Elvis Presley music, it tells the story of a motorcycle rider who pulls into town with a guitar on his back and blue suede shoes on his feet.

“It was my first profound role,” Cooley said. “I felt like I really affected people. I made people cry. I made people laugh.”

Cooley’s thinking began to change.

The role of Chad garnered him a best supporting actor nomination from Starlight Theatre’s Blue Star Awards. A local version of the Tonys, the Blue Star Awards have, since 2003, recognized the highest achievements in musical theater among some 4,000 students in 50-plus high schools across the Kansas City area.

Cooley didn’t win, but it didn’t matter. As his senior year arrived, he knew. Musical theater, with all its uncertainties — with success dependent on an unknown mixture of drive, talent and luck — was what he wanted to do.

Now he just needed to tell his parents.

‘I have something to tell you’

“I wanted to do it,” Cooley said of studying theater, “but I didn’t have the confidence to admit that. It was scary. I grew up in an academic mind-space. I was very aware of how important getting into a good college could be if you wanted a stable career. You’re doing all this work in high school so you can be stable and set. Then you have this other side.”

The other side is one in which nothing is guaranteed. He knew that a person could be a decent accountant, an average dentist, doctor, engineer, even a competent psychologist and still make a good living. But one could be the best actor, singer, dancer or musician within five states and still struggle.

“I had put so much effort into it (academics),” Cooley said. “I didn’t know if I could just throw it all away. I was like, ‘You’re actually smart. But I don’t know if I’m’,” — he cut himself off — “’I don’t know if I believe I’m as talented as I am smart.’

“It was a really hard choice. There’s so much pressure on kids at that age, overall, as to what you’re going to do.”

Summer ended. Senior year began. With college applications soon due, Cooley spoke to his mother at home.

“He says, ‘I have something to tell you,’” Julie Cooley recalled. “’I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to be a psychologist anymore. I want to do theater.’ He said, ‘The one thing the pandemic has taught me is that I should do what I’m impassioned about and I love. Life is short.’

“What could I say to that?”

The Cooleys had one caveat.

“I said, ‘OK,’” his mom said, “‘but you should think about a Plan B.’ I said, ‘You know, everybody wants to be an NFL player. Everybody doesn’t get to be an NFL player.’”

Cooley agreed. The family hired a coach for college auditions, worked on monologues and submitted applications to his first choice, Syracuse University, and Penn State University, Elon University and Texas Christian. Cooley wanted to be near New York, but didn’t apply to the famed Julliard School.

“At this point, I still had a profound sense of insecurity,” Cooley said. “I didn’t want to take the risk.”

Cooley’s senior year at Olathe East was a triumph, with roles in “13: The Musical,” “Tarzan,” “The Outsiders,” and the male lead, Dmitry, in “Anastasia,” which brought him his second Blue Star nomination, this time for best actor.

“He was only our second lead actor nominee in our school’s history, which, alone, is a big deal,” said Eddie Shafer, the director of theater at East, where he has worked 13 years. “Then he went on to win the award, which was amazing. That was the last day of school his senior year.”

Posters and photographs of the school’s shows hang in the hallways outside its theaters, inside Shafer’s classroom and the school’s front office. Cooley’s photo is everywhere. By the time he won the Blue Star, he had agreed to attend Texas Christian (Syracuse didn’t offer him enough scholarship money).

His Blue Star win also made him eligible to compete against 73 other students in July 2021 for the The Jimmy Awards, a program that showcases the best musical theater talent among high school students nationwide. The competition is judged by a panel of Broadway actors, agents, casting directors. Numerous Jimmy winners and nominees have found themselves on Broadway and in touring companies.

Cooley, again, didn’t care about the outcome. The experience would be enough. Plus, he saw it as yet another sign that his plan to study musical theater in college was the right choice, no matter what struggles it brought.

“I was open,” Cooley said. “I didn’t care about anything as much as I cared about this. I thought I’ll come back to Kansas and do regional theater. I’ll try to go on tour. At that point, I had no thoughts that I’ll be on Broadway. Maybe one day, in my 40s, when I’m this wizened actor.

“I was ready to spend my young years grinding, not having much money or stability. I was committed to that.”

Cooley didn’t win a Jimmy Award. He sang “Time,” an emotive ballad from the musical, “Tuck Everlasting.” He was named a finalist.

It changed his life.

The casting agency really wanted him

The email from the Telsey Office, a Broadway casting agency, came Cooley’s way even as the Jimmy Awards were being decided. They were casting a new show, the email said, and wanted Cooley to check out the part and a song and send them an audition video.

Excited, Cooley was also doubtful, figuring it was just a pro forma invite to the Jimmy’s young singers.

“I was like, OK, yeah, they probably sent this email to a lot of people,” Cooley said. Plus he was busy. “I actually put it off, initially.”

Not only was he competing for a Jimmy Award via Zoom that July because of COVID, he had college to prepare for and was doing a summer show in Kansas City put on by Stage Right Performing Arts. Beyond that, he was nervous.

“I was, like, I’m probably not even going to get this. They’re not really looking for me. And, quite frankly,” Cooley remembered thinking, “I’m scared to send the video. I don’t think I’m ready. I don’t think I’m ready for these people to see me.”

So, he said, “I procrastinated.”

The Telsey Office persisted: Please send us your audition.

Cooley wrote back. He was busy. He was in a show, plus, he had gotten sick. He’d contracted mono.

Telsey hung in there: ”They responded, ‘We will wait,’” Cooley said. “’We will wait another two weeks for your video.’”

What Cooley didn’t know is the producer, director and casting agent for “Kimberly Akimbo” had looked at some 300 young actors to play Seth, the sweet, nerdy, anagram-obsessed friend of the “Kimberly Akimbo” title character, a 16-year-old to be played by Tony-Award winning actress Victoria Clark, in her early 60s.

Bernie Telsey, head of the agency, was a judge for the Jimmys, watching the nominees on video. Cooley stood out.

“He was completely, I want to say ‘charming’ isn’t the right word,” Telsey told The Star. “He invited you in. He came across the footlights. I mean, we weren’t even seeing him in person — I was seeing him on video — and it always felt like he was coming through the video. And it was adorable. It was inviting. It was refreshing. Even if he didn’t have the largest voice in the room, it didn’t matter. He put across the story through music.”

It was late July, a week before college orientation. Cooley shipped off his tape.

“It was spot on,” Telsey said. Would he thrive or collapse under the pressure of a major production? They asked to see him live.

‘Kimberly Akimbo’ audition

Come to New York City for a callback.

He did, but first came college orientation. He met his classmates. He had a blast. Then, with his mom, he flew to New York City to find himself in a studio, sitting in a circle with other hopefuls.

“They have agents. They have credits. I’m like, ‘Oh, my gosh, why am I here?’” Cooley said.

He’d just turned 18 that June.

Sitting in the room, about to judge him, was the producer, David Stone; director, Jessica Stone; author and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire; and composer Jeanine Tesori, a five-time Tony nominee, Tony winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist.

“Jeanine Tesori, who I idolized, came and sat next to me,” Cooley said. “She was like, ‘We’re so glad you could be here.’ I was like, ‘Oh, they actually know who I am.’”

The callback went well. Good vibe, Cooley said. He’d made them laugh. About an hour later, Cooley and his mom were leaving their hotel with a plan to see Central Park, when his phone rang. It was the production team. They wanted him to come back now.

This time, it was down to him and one other actor.

“I’m talking to the director. They’re trying different things. They’re handing me fresh scenes and fresh songs that I’m just learning on the fly. I remember making them laugh so hard. And it was like a really good 10 minutes, and I left.”

Twenty minutes later, Cooley and his mom were headed to dinner. His phone rang again.

“Are you kidding me?!” Cooley said, thrilled at the great news.

The storybook ending might say the rest is happy history: an off-Broadway run and for, Cooley, multiple off-Broadway acting honors — Outer Critics Circle Award nominee, Drama Desk Award nominee and others, before the show moved to Broadway last November. Then, in May, a Tony nomination.

But history also has obstacles. Cooley faced them from the start.

Hard work

“I remember the first rehearsals for the show,” Cooley said. “I was so scared, Not only was I out of my depth in so many ways, but as an artist, as an actor, it was a big jump.”

From high school graduate to New York theater professional. The production company had helped him find an apartment in east Harlem. He was living on his own, cooking on his own, paying his own bills.

Cooley had never done more than five shows over a weekend. This schedule would be eight shows a week, with two shows on Wednesdays and Sundays, Mondays off. Rehearsals lasted six hours per day. Cooley tacked on an extra hour for acting lessons and another on his day off. He did three hours of script study at night. Up early, home late, then back to the theater.

“I was not a prodigy. I was not incredible out of the gate. I had to work hard. I had to learn and change a lot,” he said.

Self-doubt and self-criticism often threatened to creep in.

“Absolutely, it still creeps in,” Cooley said. “There were tears like every week during my first rehearsal process for sure. It is hard. In my experience, I never felt, like, I’m good, I’m great, I’m excelling at this, and this is easy.”

What he did have was unwavering support from the cast, from his family and an intense desire to improve.

“You can tell when your child is troubled,” Julie Cooley said. “I could tell that he was bothered. He was really overwhelmed. He would talk about the talent he was working with, ‘Mom, they’re Tony winners.’

“’Justin,’ I said, ‘they see something in you. Remember, you’re 19. They’re not expecting you to be an expert at this.’ But he never talked about giving up.”

Dad counseled trust and patience. “Just do the best you can,” Paul Cooley said he told his son. “If that’s good enough, it’s going to be good enough. If it’s not, it’s not. They’ll let you know. Or they’ll help you.”

Cooley, a top student, was always excited to learn.

“I think the thing that helped, actually, is I don’t have an issue of being too proud,” Cooley said. “I said, ‘I’m not as good as I want to be, so let’s get there.’ In a way, I had the grace with myself to be, like, ‘It’s time to learn. You have these people behind you. Just learn, learn, learn as much as you can.’

“While that was painful, while it was hard to be the least experienced, the least refined actor in the room — I definitely flopped and fumbled a lot — there was a twinge of excitement I got from being the worst in the room, looking at such greatness (the actors around him) and aspiring to be like that, and work like that.”

So he did. Cooley’s parents and brothers will be in the audience at the Tonys in New York. Students and faculty at Olathe East have been invited to a red carpet event to watch the broadcast inside the school’s theater.

On June 23, Cooley will turn 20 years old. He’s far from the youngest actor to be nominated for a Tony.

Evanna Lien was age 8 when she was nominated in 1960 for her role as Gretl in “The Sound of Music.” Frankie Michaels was age 10 (the youngest Tony winner ever) when he won for best featured actor in a musical for his role in the 1966 musical “Mame.” Liza Minnelli got a Tony at age 19 in 1965 for the short-lived musical “Flora the Red Menace.” Matthew Broderick was 21 when he won in 1983 for Neil Simon’s “Brighton Beach Memoirs.”

Cooley isn’t concerned that success has come so early. Some people, in backhanded ways, have called him “lucky,” he said, with what he called “a particular bite on the word ‘lucky.’”

“I am lucky,” he said. “But that hasn’t changed what I do. I’ve never thought that because I’m lucky that I don’t have to work hard. It’s never changed the way I do things.”

What’s next

All shows close. Casts move on. Julie and Paul Cooley said their son has been saving his money for when either day arrives and their son again faces auditions. They have faith in both his judgment and talent.

As a former athlete, Paul Cooley has looked at his son through that lens.

“Once I really start thinking about what just happened to him,” he said, “he basically went straight to the NBA, right? He went straight to the NFL. He went from high school on to Broadway. And now (with the Tony nomination), not only did he go to the NBA, he’s All Star.”

Whereas some young people are ready for that, others aren’t.

“I think he has his head on right,” his dad said. “Sometimes people are just made for this stuff. It doesn’t always happen. It just kind of seems like this is what he’s meant to do. Things are coming at him fast, yes. It’s stressful. It’s not easy. But nothing in life that’s good is easy.

“I know I’m his father, and I’m supposed to say these things, but Justin’s always been that kid that wants to do things right. He wants to please. And he’s a good person.”

Over all, Paul Cooley said, “I think he’s going to be OK.”

College, at least for now, is on hold. Just as the theater world has opened to him, Cooley said, he is open to it.

“It’s a strange thing,” he said. “I didn’t ask for all of this. Obviously, I wouldn’t have dared. I know other theater kids who have had all these visions and dreams and secrets — not wanting to reach too far, because they didn’t want to be disappointed.

“Things have come to me. I just have to appreciate that. I’ve gotten a Tony nomination, which is a really big deal. And it’s hard to cope with the feeling like I deserve it when, I know, so many people work for years for it.

“But there are still so many others things for me to do. I think the fact that I’ve gotten here means that the future is vast. Certainly, it’s bright, but it’s vast. … I plan to keep going.”

Watching the Tony Awards

Actress Ariana DeBose will host the 76th annual Tony Awards, airing at 7 p.m. Sunday, June 11, on CBS and Paramount+.