Nick and Amanda met when they were both doing Bullets Over Broadway, a musical based on the 1994 Woody Allen film of the same name that opened in April 2014. Cordero played Cheech, a gangster and aspiring auteur, while Zach Braff, who would become a close friend, co-starred as a playwright who has to get in bed with the mob in order for his show to go on.
Amanda was a dancer in the ensemble. The Ohio native spent two Christmas seasons as a Rockette at Radio City Music Hall before appearing in shows such as Follies and Young Frankenstein. In her rare spare time, in addition to being a six-days-a-week fitness buff, she also co-wrote the blog Just Desserts NYC, putting a sweet tooth that couldn’t be tamed to productive use.
When she joined the cast of Bullets, she was recently divorced following a six-year marriage to actor David Larsen, whom she had met while working on her first Broadway show, Good Vibrations, in 2005.
With most of their days and evenings consumed by Bullets, Cordero and Kloots would go home to their own apartments but end up on Skype for hours each night. During these long chats, Nick played Amanda the songs he was writing on the side, solo rock stardom also being part of the master plan. One of the tunes was “Live Your Life,” which at the time only had a chorus, and he would just hum through the rest of the melody.
Despite being nominated for six Tony Awards, including one for Cordero for Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical, Bullets Over Broadway closed after only a few months—but Nick and Amanda were just getting going.
