School of Rock child stars marry 22 years after meeting on cult classic: ‘Time capsule moment’
Two School of Rock child stars, who played classmates on the cult classic, have married each other two decades after meeting on set.
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A rock and roll romance.
Two stars from the movie School of Rock have tied the knot more than two decades after meeting on the beloved 2003 film.
Angelo Massagli and Caitlin Hale were just 10 years old when they first crossed paths at the audition for School of Rock, which follows Jack Black as a destitute, never-was rock and roller who builds a rock band from a class of elementary school kids.
Hale played precocious pig-tailed back-up singer Marta, or “Blondie” as Black’s character referred to her.
Massagli took the part of Frankie, aka the “Tough Guy,” one of the band’s security detail.
Massagli was left awe-struck after seeing Hale’s audition, as he told the New York Times.
The young actress wowed producers with a showstopping rendition of Everything’s Coming Up Roses from Gypsy, switching up the lyrics to be about the movie’s director, five-time Oscar nominee Richard Linklater.
“I was like, ‘Wow, that girl’s really, really, really something else,’” Massagli said.
When spontaneously asked to sing a song at the audition in New York City, a nervous Massagli sang the only tune he knew by heart: Crazy Train by Ozzy Osbourne.
After booking the gig, the pair met again one year later when filming began in New York. According to Hale, all of the young actors playing the peewee rock and rollers became fast friends, bonding during actual school time on set and trips to Benihana. Their mums grew close too, and Black reportedly joined the kids for lunch and played games between takes.
Hale and Massagli said that neither had a crush on the other during filming.
After production wrapped and the movie was released, the cohort of kids remained in touch through a long-running group chat.
Massagli and Hale ended up leaving acting behind. Now a lawyer, Massagli works as a music product counsel for TikTok. Hale is an OB-GYN sonographer.
The pair reconnected in 2018 while they were both pursuing degrees at universities in Florida. They grabbed lunch for old times’ sake and sent a selfie to their mums, who had been close during filming.
“We thought that was kind of it,” Massagli recalled. “But we just kept grabbing dinners and going out for the weekends. We were like, ‘something’s brewing here.’”
“Even though it wasn’t romantic, that familiarity we had and our families had when we were younger, really cut through some of those early relationship hurdles,” he added.
Hale knew that Massagli was endgame shortly after reconnecting.
“I knew very early,” Hale remembered. “I actually said to one of my close friends, I remember being in an Uber on the way down to Miami one weekend and we were going out and I was like, ‘I think I’m gonna marry this guy.’”
That same year, Massagli gave Hale permission “to crash” at his Miami home while he was out of town for a week to save her from commuting from Fort Lauderdale to Miami, where she was part of a residency program. Massagli returned to find Hale had fully moved in.
In 2019, the pair relocated to Brooklyn. Massagli popped the question in June 2023 in front of the Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
After Hale said yes, the couple celebrated with dinner at Nino’s, an Italian restaurant on the Upper East Side, and Champagne at the Carlyle.
The wedding took place on January 4 at the Park Château Estate & Gardens in East Brunswick, New Jersey. A Versailles-like venue, the estate was the perfect spot for the couple who said they wanted to “go all out.”
As for the music, Hale and Massagli entered their reception to Through the Wire by Kanye West before dancing their first dance to Chaka Khan’s Through the Fire.
They had specific marching orders for the DJ: Play songs that felt like “if Studio 54 never closed,” Massagli said.
In a pointed callback to School of Rock, the couple danced to Edge of Seventeen by Stevie Nicks.
They were joined by nine of their castmates, who were on hand to celebrate their friends’ union.
Jack Black could not attend as he was working on a movie. But Hale said the star “was so nice and generous with his words and definitely commemorated it privately.”
The former child star also had a sweet reunion on the dance floor with the other School of Rock back-up singers, which she described as a “time capsule moment.”
“We were just dancing together to some old-school disco and then there was some sort of ad lib in the song and we all just hit it,” she shared. “We looked at each other and we’re like, ‘That just happened. We still got it.’”
Wedding guests were treated to a three-tiered wedding cake, cannoli on the dance floor and a food truck handing out McDonald’s on their way out.
This article originally appeared in New York Post and was reproduced with permission
Originally published as School of Rock child stars marry 22 years after meeting on cult classic: ‘Time capsule moment’
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