WWE Superstar, Omos, Attended High School in MoCo

In less than two weeks, Omos will team with his “best friend” AJ Styles to take on The New Day for the Raw Tag Team Championship at Wrestlemania 37, but did you know that he attended high school in Rockville?

The 7’3, 335 Nigerian-born Jordan Omogbehin moved to America with his family and attended school/played basketball at Montrose Christian for the 2008/2009 and 2009/2010 school years.

He went on to attend and play for the University of South Florida before moving back to Maryland and attending/playing for Morgan State University. His college basketball career spanned from 2012 to 2015.

Omogbehin has been signed with WWE since October 2018, but will make his in-ring debut on the grandest stage of then all…Wrestlemania.

Omos wouldn’t have a shortage of people to talk MoCo with at Wrestlemania. Shane McMahon, the son of WWE chairman and owner Vince McMahon, was born in Gaithersburg. The McMahons (Vince, his wife Linda, and Shane) even lived in Montgomery Village for about a decade, and the home they owned was recently sold.

Chapelle’s Show to Return to Netflix

Dave Chapelle grew up in Silver Spring, attending Woodlin Elementary School before attending Duke Ellington School of the Arts in DC.

His show, Chapelle’s Show, was removed from Netflix after the comedian requested the popular streaming service do so due to a previous agreement with Comedy Central that didn’t allow him to collect royalties.

In an Instagram post titled Redemption Song, Chapelle said the following:

“I asked you to stop watching the show and thank God almighty for you, you did. You made that show worthless because without your eyes, it’s nothing,” Chappelle told the audience. “And when you stopped watching it, they called me. And I got my name back and I got my license back and I got my show back and they paid me millions of dollars. Thank you very much.”

The show is expected to be back on the streaming service very soon.

Robert Altman, CEO and Founder of Rockville-Based ZeniMax, Has Passed Away

Robert Altman, a native to the DC area, passed away last week at the age of 73, following complications from a medical procedure.

Altman founded ZeniMax alongside Bethesda Softworks founder Christopher Weaver back in 1999. Prior to founding ZeniMax, Robert was a lawyer in the DC area.

Robert Altman’s wife, Lynda Carter, shared a statement on her Instagram today paying tribute to her late husband.

Robert and Lynda (the original Wonder Woman) lived together in Potomac.

In a statement published by ZeniMax, the company shared that Altman was ” a true visionary, friend, and believer in the spirit of people and the power of what they could accomplish together. He was an extraordinary leader, and an even better human being.” It was shared that Altman wrote weekly emails to his staff at ZeniMax throughout the pandemic.

ZeniMax, the Rockville-based parent company of Bethesda Softworks, was recently acquired by Microsoft for 7.5 billion dollars. (Read more about the deal here.)

Featured photo courtesy of the Bethesda Softworks Twitter.

By: Michelle Katz @pike.and.rozay

Tampa Bay’s Ross Cockrell attended Whitman High School

Earlier this week we highlighted Dorian O’Daniel– the Good Counsel graduate who will be playing in his second straight Super Bowl for the Kansas Scott Chiefs.

Today we’ve learned that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers also have a player with MoCo ties.

Cornerback Ross Cockrell was the 109th pick of the 2014 NFL Draft, selected by the Buffalo Bills in the 4th round. Since then he has played for the Steelers, Giants, Panthers, and now the Buccaneers where he has been on the active roster since the team’s week 5 game against the Chicago Bears.

Cockrell spent his freshman year in Bethesda, attending school and playing JV football for the Whitman Vikings, where he was a cornerback abd wide receiver.

He ended up transferring to a private school in Charlotte and became a highly rated cornerback prior to signing with Duke where he reunited with his high school teammate and former Whitman standout, Anthony Young-Wiseman.

We wish both Dorian O’Daniel and Ross Cockrell the best of luck in the Super Bowl today!

While networks like HBO and Showtime get a lot of attention for their original series, Starz has done a great job creating its own successful shows. Its highest rated series of all-time, Power, is a crime drama that aired for six seasons– from 2014 through February of 2020. It was created and produced in part by Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, and follows the life of a man named James St. Patrick AKA “Ghost” who is dealing drugs in New York while working as a nightclub owner. Main characters James St. Patrick/Ghost, Tommy, Tasha, Tariq, and others don’t have any MoCo ties, a few actors who appeared throughout the series are MoCo natives.

Darrell Britt-Gibson (Rolla)

Britt-Gibson played the role of Rolla– one of the many drug dealers who worked with Tommy and Ghost/James St. Patrick. He was mentored by Ghost in the early years while growing up in he drug business. His character was wrongly killed by Ghost after being framed for hiring a hit man to kill Ghost. He was born and raised in Silver Spring and graduated from Blake High School in 2003.

Brandon Victor Dixon (Terry Silver)

Dixon is a Tony-nominated actor from his recent roles as Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar. He played the role of James St. Patrick’s defense attorney, and Tasha St. Patrick’s love interest, Terry Silver. He is killed by Ghost/James St. Patrick after his affair with Tasha St. Patrick is revealed. He is from Gaithersburg, but attended St. Albans School in Washington D.C.

Cynthia Addai-Robinson (Ramona Garrity)

Addai-Robinson played the role of Ramona Garrity– a political strategist for the DNC (Democrat National Committee).  She also begins to be a love interest for James St. Patrick/Ghost in the final season of the show. Addai-Robinson was born on January 12, 1980, in London; her mother is from Ghana and her father was a U.S. citizen. She moved to the U.S. when she was 4 and was raised by her mother in Silver Spring, where she graduated from Blair High School in 1998.

New Netflix hit show Bridgerton created by Watkins Mill Alum Chris Van Dusen  

By Madison Tringone

The new number one show on Netflix, Bridgerton, was created by Chris Van Dusen, a Watkins Mill alum.  Bridgerton is an American streaming television period drama series created by Chris Van Dusen and produced by Shonda Rhimes. The show is based on Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton collection novels.  

Taking place in the early part of the 19th century, the books follow the eight siblings in the Bridgerton family, four boys and four girls, as they seek the loves of their lives. For Van Dusen, bringing this world to life on the small screen is also about something else.

Though race isn’t discussed in the books, Van Dusen was adamant that he wanted the show to reflect the world in which we live. It’s also a central component for all of  Shondaland’s shows. Bridgerton posed a unique opportunity to have a multiracial cast with a period piece. Building the world of Bridgerton for the last three years has been Van Dusen’s only focus. Van Dusen wanted to take his love for period shows that he thinks are considered traditional and conservative and “turn it into something fresh, topical and relatable” (Valenti). 

Van Dusen is known for working with Shondaland and writing and producing Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal.  He devoured Quinn’s stories after Rhimes gave him a copy of the eight-book series three years ago to see if it might be something he’d be interested in developing. While reading, he saw elements of his favorite types of storytelling: romance, sex, intrigue, all with a powerful family at the core.

Van Dusen stated in an interview with Pay Or Wait that he wants Bridgerton to be “pure escapism…that’s something I think we could all use right now.”  Behind all of the escapism, Chris Van Dusen aimed to have a modern commentary about how over the last 200 years, everything and nothing have changed, for men and women. The show was released on December 25, 2020 and has already soared to #1 in the United States.

Editor’s note: We are working on getting an interview with Van Dusen in hopes of hearing more about his time growing up in MoCo.

Krystian Ochman, Wootton Class of 2017, Wins The Voice: Poland

The MoCoShow sends its congratulations to Krystian Ochman, a 2017 graduate of Wootton High School, who was recently crowned the winner of The Voice of Poland.

The Voice, which has run for 19 seasons in the United States, is based on The Voice Holland– a show that pairs amateur artists with coaches (successful singers) through blind auditions and allows them to compete weekly until one winner remains. The winner receives a $100,000 contract and a contract with Universal (in the U.S.).

Krystian recently won The Voice of Poland by singing Madonna’s Frozen, Frank Sinatra’s My Way (duet with his coach, and Polish song Nie Czejak Mnie w Argentynie.

While at Wootton he starred in many theatrical productions at the school and studied at the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Poland.

Article was updated to reflect correct graduation year of 2017.

Taylor Momsen is well known for her role as Cindy Lou Who in How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Jenny Humphrey on Gossip Girl, but did you know she grew up in Potomac? Momsen attended Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic School in Bethesda for elementary school and then Hoover Middle School.

She was cast in her first national commercial as a four year old and later her first major motion picture– The Prophet’s Game with Dennis Hopper. In 2002, she played Gretel in Hansel and Gretel and Alexandra, the President’s daughter, in Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams. After a three year stall, she landed the lead in a WB series titled Misconceptions that never made it to the air.

Momsen was in the final three for the title role of Hanna Montana, a role that ultimately went to Miley Cyrus, and then starred in the Disney movie Underdog and the film Paranoid Park, all while enrolled as a student at Hoover Middle School. She spent four seasons on Gossip Girl before leaving acting behind to focus on her music career. Momsen started the band, and is currently the lead singer of, the Pretty Reckless. Her band has charted on Billboard and continues to be the focus of Momsen’s career.

Home Alone is considered one of the all-time greats when it comes to Christmas movies. If you needed more reason to enjoy the series of movies, we’re going to let you know about the MoCo connection for two of its stars– Daniel Stern and the late John Heard.

Daniel Stern, who played Marv– one half of the “Sticky Bandits” along with Joe Pesci, grew up in Bethesda and attended Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School. Though he dropped out of school to move to New York to pursue his acting career, Stern starred in several theater productions at B-CC. John Heard played the role of Peter McCallister, the father of protagonist Kevin McCallister. Heard grew up in nearby DC and came back to attend Catholic University after going to High School in Massachusetts. As an adult, his parents lived in Chevy Chase and Heard would spend a lot of time in the area. Sadly, Heard passed away back in 2017.

Chef David Chang, Recent Winner of Who Wants to be a Millionaire, Has MoCo Ties

You might have heard the news that celebrity chef David Chang won the million dollar prize on Who Wants to be a Millionaire’s most recent episode this past Sunday night.  Did you know that he went to high school in MoCo?

David Chang attended Georgetown Prep and graduated in 1995 from the North Bethesda private school. Although he attended school in MoCo, he never actually lived here. He was born in DC and raised in Arlington, VA.

He is the first celebrity to ever win the million dollar prize on the show– all previous celebrities had either chosen to walk away with a lower amount or incorrectly answered a question.

When deciding between the answer on the million dollar final question, Chang jokingly referenced his time in school, saying that if he got the final question wrong, it’s because “I didn’t do well enough in school. I was a terrible student. That’s why I became a chef.”

Chang opted to donate his million dollar winnings to Southern Smoke Foundation, a crisis relief organization for people in the food and beverage industry.

Chef Chang is best known for his Momofuku restaurants and his Netflix show, Ugly Delicious.

Featured photo courtesy of David Chang’s instagram.

By Michelle Katz @pike.and.rozay