Artist:Karen Olivo f/Lin-Manuel Miranda, Robin de Jesus
Song:It Won't Be Long
Album:In the Heights: Original Broadway Cast Recording
Karen Olivo had her breakthrough role for playing Olivia in the 2008 Broadway musical In the Heights. Then she won a Tony for playing Anita in the 2009 revival of West Side Story. But things didn't go so well after that. And the result is she changed her name to KO and is non binary. She now lives in Illinois and teaches. So she could have been a star. But it looks like she became disenchanted with show business. I will refer to her as Karen as this role was before she changed her name. She was born Aug. 7, 1976 in the South Bronx in New York City. Her father is Puerto Rican and her mother is Dominican. She grew up in Bartow, FL. and attended the Lois Cowles Harrison Center for the Visual and Performing Arts in Lakeland. Then she studied at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. She left before her final year to be a replacement and understudy on the 1997 Broadway musical Rent. She also toured with the show. After returning to New York, Karen couldn't get any decent Broadway roles. So she took some TV roles until In the Heights came up in 2007. Of course I have talked about In the Heights before. Vanessa was the female lead. And it should have made her a star. BTW, the film version of In the Heights was released in 2021. So Karen would have been too old to play Vanessa. The original cast album is available on CD. Immediately after this, Karen won a Tony for playing Anita in the 2009 revival of West Side Story. She tried TV and film. She did some TV guest shots and she didn't appear in any notable films. She was a regular on the NBC series Harry's Law starring Kathy Bates. But that show was cancelled after two seasons. This is when Karen changed her name to KO and moved to Madison, WI to teach theater at the University of Wisconsin theater department. Karen returned to the Chicago production of Lin-Manuel Miranda's new show Hamilton. She left in Aug. 2017 to return to teaching. She returned again in 2019 Broadway adaptation of Baz Luhrmann's film Moulin Rouge!. Karen was nominated for a Tony. The show was suspended for COVID. Karen announced that she would not return to Moulin Rouge! afterwards because abuse allegations against producer Scott Rudin were not addressed by the industry. BTW, Rudin was not a producer on Moulin Rouge!. And the allegations were in The Hollywood Reporter. So it looks like she was looking for a reason to leave the business. And that's what she did. Karen is now an associate professor at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. So that was the real reason she quit the business. Here's Karen Olivo with Lin-Manuel Miranda and Robin de Jesus performing It Won't Be Long on a 2008 episode of Good Morning America.
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