We’re having the time of our lives! Real couple set to fall in love on stage again as they return for West End run of Dirty Dancing… four years after meeting in the audition room during 2018 UK tour

It is the ultimate summer love story.

And Michael O’Reilly and Kira Malou really have had the time of their lives after falling in love on stage – and in real life.

The couple are returning to play lovers Johnny Castle and Frances ‘Baby’ Houseman for a West End run of Dirty Dancing, four years after they met in the audition room for the 2018 UK tour.

‘When you start doing the show and you’re spending every day with each other, you’re falling in love on stage,’ O’Reilly told the Mail. ‘It was a natural process of falling in love and we got to go on this amazing adventure together.

‘It was a natural process of falling in love and we got to go on this amazing adventure together,’ O’Reilly told the Mail

Thankfully the lift has never gone wrong, in part thanks to O’Reilly’s rigorous training which sees him holding and lifting heavy dumbbells above his head until his arms can’t take anymore

‘There is so much common ground and in the beginning, we felt like a real team. We were really there for each other.’

He added: ‘We have an interpretation that no one else has ever found because no one else has ever done that. When you go and watch the show you really are watching a once in a lifetime thing.’

Dirty Dancing follows the daughter of a doctor, played by Jennifer Grey, who embarks on a forbidden love affair with a dancer, played by Patrick Swayze, at a holiday camp in the Catskills in the summer of 1963.

O’Reilly, 25, landed the lead straight out of Bird College in Sidcup, Kent, back in 2018. He met Miss Malou, 27, during the last round of auditions and later tentatively reached out to see if she had secured the role of Baby.

The pair then started messaging over Instagram while Miss Malou was away working in Italy before meeting up a handful of times ahead of rehearsals.

Miss Malou, who has been dancing since she was four, compared the start of their relationship to a ‘business proposition’ and said they didn’t have an official first date because they were ‘always just hanging out for breakfast or lunch’.

She said: ‘We were sharing digs as well so it’s like we got together and basically moved in together straight away.

‘It was like we do have this responsibility and we don’t want to put anyone through an awkward situation, and we don’t want us to be in an awkward situation.

The couple, who met in 2018 in the audition room for the UK tour, compared the start of their relationship to a ‘business proposition’ 

He added: ‘We have an interpretation that no one else has ever found because no one else has ever done that’

O’Reilly has also attracted a bevy of women ‘who are ready to eat him up and take him home’, including Miss Malou’s friends who she joked were disappointed to find out that O’Reilly was taken

Sparks have continued to fly between the couple who made their West End debut together back in February and will return to London’s Dominion Theatre next month

‘It was literally the most strategic thinking about getting together which was really funny.

‘You could tell everyone else knew and they were a bit like “what’s this going to be like?” It was so dramatic.’

O’Reilly added: ‘We were at a Halloween party on the first tour and the company manager, a really good friend of ours comes up to me, he’s dressed as batman, and he went “Michael you can’t break up with Kira you couldn’t do that” and that was the first time I thought “oh my goodness I really have a responsibility to the show”.’

Luckily, sparks have continued to fly between the couple who made their West End debut together back in February and will return to London’s Dominion Theatre next month.

They have also moved in together in London but have found a good ‘balance’ to ensure they also have some alone time.

‘I think what we learned while being on tour last year and in town this year was making sure we have our own time,’ Miss Malou said. 

‘We live together as well so it would be very intense to spend our days together, work together, falling in love, then go home together.

‘I am falling in love with this man every single night, so I have to really be in that zone of telling the story truthfully because I have to look as if I’m seeing him. I can’t look as though “urgh Michael here he comes”.’

The pair have built up a legion of hardcore fans, some of whom buy tickets just to see them together on stage.

O’Reilly has also attracted a bevy of women ‘who are ready to eat him up and take him home’, including Miss Malou’s friends who she joked were disappointed to find out that O’Reilly was taken.

‘My friends’ first experience – they fancied him, found out we were together and went “damn”,’ she said.

The pair delight audiences with the iconic lift at the end of the show which sees Miss Malou hoisted up above O’Reilly’s head to (I’ve Had) The Time of My Life.

‘Michael is 6ft2in – that’s pretty big to be up in the air, but then his arms extended up so that’s a hell of a lot higher,’ Miss Malou said as she recalled the first time they practised the big set piece.

Dirty Dancing follows the daughter of a doctor, played by Jennifer Grey, who embarks on a forbidden love affair with a dancer, played by Patrick Swayze. The lift scene at the end of the film has been copied by many couples

Dirty Dancing star Jennifer Grey, who also featured in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, was released in May and included a reference to the famous line, ‘No body puts Baby in a corner’

‘What other couple gets to say that their job is to go on stage and fall in love with each other every night and share that story with people who need that joy in love,’ O’Reilly said

‘I went up and just didn’t stop going up. I was like “do not drop me”.’

Thankfully the lift has never gone wrong, in part thanks to O’Reilly’s rigorous training which sees him holding and lifting heavy dumbbells above his head until his arms can’t take anymore. The pair also attend dance classes.

‘You have to be over conditioned,’ he said. ‘You have to be way stronger than just being able to do it. You have to be able to do it when you’re tired, when you feel like you’re not 100 per cent, when you have to do it on a double show day… it’s so tough. I’m prepping like crazy in the gym.’

O’Reilly, who was born in Cornwall, said his job feels like ‘cheating’. 

His mother is a nurse and ‘she doesn’t get an applause every night for doing her job and she’s literally saving lives’, he said, adding: ‘She’s saved hundreds of lives and I’m just dressing up in a costume telling a story.’

But, together with Miss Malou, the pair are providing the perfect escapism.

‘What other couple gets to say that their job is to go on stage and fall in love with each other every night and share that story with people who need that joy in love,’ he said.

Post Dirty Dancing, O’Reilly is keen to play Phantom while Miss Malou would ‘love to do more TV and film – maybe some fantasies or period stuff’.

Source: Read Full Article