Melissa O'Neil

**Melissa Crystal O'Neil** (born July 12, 1988) is a Canadian-American singer and stage and screen actress, and is one of the main actors of *The Rookie*, portraying the role of Lucy Chen and her doppelgänger Sava "Juicy" Wu.

## Biography

### Early life

O'Neil was born and raised in Calgary, Alberta, and attended Terry Fox Junior High School before studying at Lester B. Pearson High School. Prior to her Canadian Idol experience, she worked at a day care centre and was involved in local, musical-theatre productions. Her maternal grandfather gave her a Chinese name (Chinese: 奧詩敏).

### Career

#### *Canadian Idol*

In early 2005, O'Neil auditioned for the third season of *Canadian Idol*. The judges were impressed by her vocals, and she made it through to the top 100 round. On the first day, she sang the song "Concrete Angel" by Martina McBride a cappella and again impressed the judges, but, on the final day of competition, she forgot the words to her chosen song and froze. Nevertheless, the judges were still so impressed by her singing abilities that she continued to the top 32. After scoring the highest number of votes in her semi-final group, again with "Concrete Angel", O'Neil was granted a place in the final 10 of the contest.

Although she was highly praised by the judges, O'Neil suffered setbacks in both the Top 10 and Top 9 weeks of the finals, as she was voted in both the bottom three and bottom two, respectively. Shocked by this, the judges urged viewers to vote for contestants like Melissa, who they clearly believed had the best vocal abilities. From then on, O'Neil never fell back into the bottom three after delivering consistently praised performances, with judge Zack Werner declaring that she was "a threat to win the whole thing". On September 7, 2005, O'Neil made it into the final two of the competition, alongside Rex Goudie, and after yet more stunning performances, judge Werner stated that the headlines of the next day's newspapers would be "The King [Kalan Porter] is dead, long live the Queen." During the grand finale results show on September 14, 2005, O'Neil defeated Goudie to be crowned the third Canadian Idol, as well as the first female winner, and ( at 17) the youngest winner in the show's history.

#### Post-*Idol* and acting

On April 1, 2007, O'Neil attended the annual Juno Awards, where she was nominated for Best New Artist. Coincidentally, one of the other nominees was her Canadian Idol successor, Eva Avila (however, Tomi Swick took home the award). Afterward, O'Neil stated that she was working on her second studio album, in which she aims to illustrate her full musical aspirations, and allow her to grow as an independent, imaginative artist. She starred in the musical *Dirty Dancing* in Toronto, Ontario as a featured singer. She then played the role of Gabriella in *High School Musical On Stage* with Drayton Entertainment in St. Jacobs and Penetanguishene and was featured as a lead in the Stage West Calgary production of *British Invasion*, alongside former lead singer of The Guess Who, Terry Hatty. O'Neil made her Stratford Shakespeare Festival debut during the 2011 season as Martha/Maid by the Fire in *Jesus Christ Superstar,* and she made an appearance in *Camelot*. She played Eponine in a sit-down production of *Les Misérables* in Toronto at the Princess of Wales Theatre, which ran from September 2013 through February 2014. For this performance, she won the Dora Award for Outstanding Female Performance. O'Neil later served as both a member of the ensemble and an understudy for the roles of Éponine and Fantine in the Broadway revival of *Les Misérables*, which opened March 2014. She was then promoted to play Éponine.

In December 2014, she was cast in the role of Portia Lin a.k.a. Two on the television series *Dark Matter*.

In 2018, O'Neil was cast as Lucy Chen on *The Rookie*.

On July 19, 2022, O'Neil sang "O Canada" at the Major League Baseball All Star Game in Los Angeles.

## Trivia

* In "The Shake Up", when her character speaks to her parents, she is speaking Cantonese; O'Neil's mother is Chinese and O'Neil may have learned the language at home.

## Links and references

### External links

* Melissa O'Neil at the Internet Movie Database
* Melissa O'Neil at Wikipedia
* missoneil on Official Instagram
* Melissa O'Neil on Official Twitter