The New York theatre that finally brought Logan Lerman and Dylan O’Brien together
Back in the 2010s, there were two faces that you could bet on seeing everywhere: Logan Lerman and Dylan O’Brien.
The pair share more similarities than just their curious resemblance, though. During the golden age of teen cinema, both brunettes landed one of the most coveted handsome-boy roles.
On Lerman’s side, this meant securing the title role in 2010’s Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, as well as playing the timid narrator Charlie in Stephen Chbosky’s 2012 hit The Perks of Being a Wallflower. For O’Brien, he was in the starring role of the series Teen Wolf, which ran from 2011 to 2017, along with playing the defiant hero in the dystopian film The Maze Runner and its subsequent, though less celebrated, follow-ups.
Despite their swarming in similar waters, the universe wouldn’t throw the duo together for some time. “We had run alongside each other in this industry for so long before even getting to meet and become friends,” O’Brien admitted while being interviewed by Lerman for Interview Magazine. The pair had likely passed each other in hallways or at snazzy industry events, but had never managed to land a “Hi, well gosh darn it, we look so similar!”
Because of this, their friendship took a while to form; plus, like most stars, the two live in different cities across the US, and only attempt to navigate their chocked social calendars while buzzing like flies around the celebrity cess-pit that is New York. Thankfully, the universe was making up for lost time and threw the actors together in an event that surely feels more surreal than coincidental.
Even on his way to the theatre, Lerman had O’Brien in mind. On that fated night in the Big Apple, O’Brien remembers receiving a text from his look-a-like, reading along the lines of “We’re in New York, and we miss you. When do you come back?” Quickly, O’Brien explained that he was busy that evening, attending the rave-reviewed new show Oh, Mary! that’d opened at the Lyceum Theatre. O’Brien hastily made room in his schedule for Lerman the next day, but he needn’t have: the industry titans were, in fact, attending the same showing.
As Lerman replied incredulously that he, too, was waiting to belly-laugh at the queer take on Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, he felt a tingle down his spine; he looked up, and O’Brien was dead ahead. “We were literally right in front of each other,” he recalled incredulously.
The boys were so overjoyed to see one another that they ended up pissing off a few other theatre-goers, as O’Brien recalled a woman, whom he deemed a “little crazy”, who had waited impatiently on her feet the whole time while waiting for the star to pass, despite his overzealous conversation with his longtime friend. To make matters worse, he was “really high”.
The coincidence must have seemed even more outlandish for the Twinless star, who had smoked a joint outside the venue to maximise on the hilarity of the performance, with O’Brien recalling, “I had just smoked outside, and I was like, ‘I might be way too high for this.’ It was great.”
Lerman’s poison of choice was slightly classier, as he had been for a martini (or two) beforehand. Intoxicated or otherwise, the universe certainly wants the pair to remain friends. And thank God for Broadway!
