A seven-year-old Irish girl got the surprise of a lifetime this week after a video of her singing A Million Dreams from The Greatest Showman got a response from the film’s star, Hugh Jackman.
Emma Cooney of Lucan in Dublin, Ireland, was left disappointed earlier this month after tickets for Jackman’s Greatest Showman three shows in May had sold out.
Later, Cooney’s mother Jacqueline recorded her daughter singing one of the film’s songs and posted it to Twitter.
According to Jacqueline, they got the film and a singalong CD for Christmas and “she loved it.”
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“Emma has watched the film four times since Christmas and she now knows all the words and is always singing the songs,” she told RTÉ Entertainment. “I asked her, would she have gone to see Hugh in concert and she said yes but, of course, by then it was too late to get tickets.”
She said she suggested to her daughter to sing one of the songs and they would tweet it to Jackman.
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After first uploading it, they didn’t have much success, but after checking out his Twitter she discovered he only followed 14 people, so she decided to tag one of those people in hopes it might reach the “Greatest Showman” himself.
It worked and through the simple retweet by actor Liev Schreiber and one of Jackman’s childhood friends, Gus Worland, he saw the video.
On Wednesday, he tweeted out a video of his own, with the caption, “got your message @Jacki_Coo.”
In the video, he called the move by Jacqueline “ingenious,” before addressing Emma.
“Thank you so much for singing that song, thanks so much for being a fan and never stop dreaming,” he said. “Life is what you choose to make it, so make it fantastic. Sending lots and lots of love.”
When she saw the video, Jacqueline said she “freaked out,” and had only expected maybe a text, but considered Jackman’s move “lovely and so genuine.”
Cooney was also blown away.
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“She’s quite shy, so when I showed her Hugh’s reply she was asking who are all these people looking at my video,” Jacqueline said. “So I said, ‘look, it’s the Greatest Showman’ and after that she was buzzing.”
Storyful reports Cooney also said the A-lister arranged for tickets to be given to them for the Dublin show.
As of Jan. 11, the video has been viewed more than 38,000 times.
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