Armando Ferraro

Armando Ferraro as BadBoy

**Armando Ferraro** is an Italian-born Canadian actor, dancer, author, and minister. Known among aficionados as “the baddest BadBoy” for his legendary partying and substance abuse issues, followed by his subsequent turnaround and career as a Pentecostal minister, Ferraro played the character for six months between September 2000 and Feburary 2001.

Armando Ferraro was the 5th MuchMusic intern to play BadBoy. Ferraro was fired from his position as BadBoy after going on-air intoxicated. Newspapers and tabloids had articles for weeks suggesting that this could be the end of the innocence of BadBoy as a fun youth character for the nation's 13-16 year olds. The show was put on hiatus until May 2001 when Rick DeSanto was hired, in the hopes that he could redeem the character's good name.

## Early Life

Armando Guiseppe Ferraro was born in Grosseto, Italy on May 13, 1977 and emigrated to Canada with his parents at the age of two. They settled in the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce area of Montreal where he grew up. Always interested in dance and acting, Ferraro left home at the age of 18 to study theatre and dance at the University of Toronto, graduating with high honours and taking an internship with MuchMusic right after graduation.

## Career as BadBoy

Producers at the channel were looking to replace BadBoy actor Chess Henderson due to swirling (and eventually confirmed) rumours of his homosexuality, and were drawn to the young Ferraro’s charisma and dancing talent. Ferraro was a magnetic stage presence and a fan favourite whose skills made BadBoy’s Back 2 Basics Beach Party 2000 one of the show’s biggest-ever ratings draws in late September, but things soon took a turn for the worse. A burgeoning friendship with fellow MuchMusic personality and noted alcoholic Ed the Sock intensified a chronic drinking problem. “You have to understand,” he later wrote in his memoir, *BadBoy for Christ,* “to a talented young MuchMusic actor back in the heady days of late-2000, anything was available, and I mean anything. Drugs, sex with beautiful women, I did my share - but my real vice was the Bacardi.” Pressure mounting on the young star to be a role model to Canada’s youth pushed him to drink at his worst an entire bottle of the discount rum every day, and culminated in the infamous BadBoy’s Choice countdown episode of February 18, 2001, where a visibly intoxicated Ferraro slurred his words, danced awkwardly, tried to grope co-host Amanda Walsh, and eventually fell flat on his face while trying to spin the wheel, swearing loudly in front of the confused audience of young teenagers.

## Finding God

Fired unceremoniously and with his career ruined, Ferraro descended even further into drug addiction until hearing the news on Sept 11., 2001 that his fellow BadBoy actor had perished in the terror attacks. “Still slumped on my apartment floor, gazing up at the TV through my heroin-induced haze, I realized how easily that could have been me dying in that tower. And then, I heard the voice of God telling me I could be more.” Ferraro entered rehab the next day and turned his life around, enrolling in seminary and eventually leading the New Life Pentecostal Assembly in the Parkdale neighbourhood of Toronto, where he still impresses with his dancing skills - but for God. Widely held as the most naturally talented man to ever wear the flame shirt, as well as an inspiring religious figure, Armando Ferraro "will always hold a special place in the hearts of those who keep the spirit of summer 2000 alive," as one prominent music journalist put it.