She's the First-Generation American daughter of two Belizean immigrants but Kara Young's dreams have always been just as big as those of her parents, and that coupled with the hard work she's put into her acting career, has earned her a Tony nomination on her Broadway debut.

Young, who stars as a working mom and former inmate "Leticia" in the play Clyde's has said she couldn't have expected any of this but she was touched even further when The Tony's award nomination ceremony gave a standing ovation to her working-class Belizean father.

That story made it all to the way to the New York Times over the weekend and young calls it one of those magical New York moments, she shared her recollection with our Sunup hosts:

Kara Young - Tony Award Nominee
"The journey to get there, I think it was just inspiration, you know I've always been a part of the extracurricular, part of the arts as a child, I was a child, I was 5 when I took that class and my brother was taking mime and you know I really wanted to follow behind my brother's footsteps coming from a place of comfort and in return the woman who was the instructor, the teacher. She really nurtured me, she really took care of me and I guess she saw something inside of me that I hadn't seen but really activated my imagination and made me fall in love with performance. I didn't know that I was going to do this until I went away to school and I did an improv class. It was me and another young woman and we were given this instruction to improv this scene and it was our creation and we performed it the rules were that you had to perform with the same plot points that you were given for the improv that you came up with and we - everybody was balling, everybody was like balling and we were shocked, we like wait, wow, wow wow, what did we do you know, at that moment I was really like oh, this is something that I can do. Yeah that's my dad that's Lynn Nottage taking a picture of me and my father at the Tony's luncheon the other day which was so magical because my father works at the rainbow room and the Tony's luncheon was at the rainbow room and when we were there I don't know if you guys heard about this moment but when we were there there were naming the nominees per category and when they got to me, they named me and I received my plaque and then Emilio Sosa who is naming the nominees one of the chair people of American theater he was talking about coming to rehearsal and this gentleman was beaming with pride and said that his daughter was nominated for a Tony and his name was Clay Young and my father came out and the entire room gave him a standing ovation and it was like one of those magical New York moments because I grew up going to the rainbow room. My father has been there for 30 years, so it was like a full circle moment - there's an article on the New York Times about it now and people are texting me, messaging me saying they are so emotional by this moment which is a very magical magical magical moment. Honestly it went really looking back at this moment it just really like magic is real, those little magical moments there just so, you can't recreate it, it's almost like you had to be there to experience it but at the same time, I think Michael Paulson the journalist really captured the true essence of that moment even though he wasn't even there."

Kara Young is the proud daughter and niece of two former Queens of the Bay.

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