Rory O'Malley hasn't had much free time since February 2008, when he and his castmates started rehearsals for The Book of Mormon. The ambitious piece of theater - written by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, and Avenue Q composer Robert Lopez - is a cleverly profane musical look into the lives of Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints missionaries in Africa – and O'Malley is among its stars, landing a part that was literally made for him. Mormon opened in March to effusive reviews from around the country, and 14 Tony Award nominations came in May (the show took home nine awards, including the coveted Best Musical statue). O'Malley earned a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his role as Elder McKinley, a homosexual trying to deny his sexual preference.
The not-quite 30-year-old grew up on on West 160th Street in West Park, attending Our Lady of Angels, where he did his first show. He studied music and theater at Lakewood's Beck Center for the Performing Arts during his formative years. His family later moved to Bay Village, O'Malley transferring to the city's middle school. He attended St. Ignatius High School in Cleveland and earned a BFA in drama from Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, where he didn't initially audition for musical theater, but was accepted into the program when a fellow student named Josh Groban famously went a different route. He went to Los Angeles after school, working on a few projects, including Dreamgirls and Happy Days the musical. When he ventured to New York after a few years on the West Coast, he landed his first Broadway role in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.
Last Sunday was the 100th performance of Mormon, and O'Malley is just as busy off-stage. He co-founded Broadway Impact to gather a collective voice in support of marriage equality, and in doing so has attracted the attention of thousands of New Yorkers – including the mayor.
Here, O'Malley reflects on being nominated for a Tony, working with the creators of South Park, growing up in Cleveland, the lows of being an actor, the highs of being on stage and coming out for gay rights.
OhioAuthority: It's Sunday night, you're at the Beacon Theater for the Tony Awards, you're nominated for a best performance award - what's going through your mind?
Rory O'Malley: I was really proud to be representing the show I'd been working on for three years, and that I love so much, and to be sitting across the aisle from Matt [Stone] and Trey [Parker] and Robert Lopez. It was a really crazy, amazing night because they kept calling our names, and there were nine Tony [Awards] that we won – of 14 nominations.
OA: How did you land the role of Elder McKinley?
ROM: It was kind of out of the blue. Two years ago, I got a call from my agent saying they were doing a reading for a Matt, Trey and Bobby Lopez musical. I said, "Yes, sign me up. I want to be in it no matter what it is." My character didn't exist in those first readings as one of the ensemble guys, but I had a couple of funny bits, but then the next time we did a reading, I had this character Elder McKinley, and they wrote a new song, put a verse about being gay in it. Over a three-year period, there was this openly closeted character [that] evovled.
OA: In many ways Stone, Parker and Lopez wrote you into the script based on some of those initial readings you did with them, no?
ROM: People always say that this character is so perfect for you, it really fits you so well. Well, it was tailor-made, down to every single line. Nobody has ever played this part except for me, and it's such a privilege to be able to create something for three years with the writers. It'll never happen again. I'm so honored to have got to do that.
OA: Given their somewhat notorious reputations, did you have any reservations about working with the directors?
ROM: None at all. I think they're satirical geniuses, and I would be part of anything that they wrote. I thought Team America should've won the Pulitzer Prize. That movie took the temperature of 2004 so perfectly. They're so good at that, looking at the world through their lens, making people laugh, calling everyone out on their hypocrisy and the ridiculousness of where our world is. So, for them to tackle religion on Broadway, I thought "this is insane," and I would love to be part of something like that.
OA: Did the cast have many reservations leading up to the first performances about how it would be perceived?
ROM: We felt the script and the show were brilliant, that this was the coolest thing we'd ever been a part of, but that didn't necessarily mean we thought audiences would love it, it's going to sell out. It was definitely in our minds that it could not be perceived well and that there could be protests. There was actually a protest at the Tonys – a very small and sad protest – but it wasn't for our show.
OA: Did you feel cheated?
ROM: A little bit. I just assumed there would be parts of [The Book of Mormon] when people would leave. There's a song called "Fuck You God," and that's the third song of the show, and I thought at that point, everybody who is upset is going to stand up and walk out of the theater, but they never did. I'm shocked by that, but I'm also thrilled, because it shows that audiences want to be challenged and want original material. They're actually really hungry for it. These are not just New York audiences. They are from Ohio, they're from all over the country.
This show is breaking down walls that have kind of put the musical theater genre in a box for a long time. I think it's going to bring in a lot of new audiences to this art form.
