Zach D’Onofrio is good at keeping secrets.
For years, he was a squeaky-voiced kid who sang quietly in the church chorus, who ran the lights at his family’s Dreamhouse Theatre, a kid happy to work behind the scenes in the midst of his song-happy family of performers.
Then one night, at the age of 15, he called his family into the living room of their Seven Oaks home.
“Mom and Dad, I want you to hear something,” he told them.
Sensing something dramatic was about to happen, Darci, his mother, pulled out her phone and started recording.
Zach started singing. Frank Sinatra’s “The Way You Look Tonight.”
Everyone’s world changed that night.
“When I heard his voice like that, I started bawling, just crying,” Darci says.
His sister, who was in her room, heard her brother sing and started screaming, and came rushing into the living room.
“It was like, whaaaaaaat?,” says Bryan, his father.
Zach has always been afraid of what people would say if he sang for them. He told his parents he wasn’t sure he should share his voice.
“You need to share this with the world,” Darci tearfully told him.
And he has, from one “American Idol” audition to the next, from Wesley Chapel to Orlando to New York.
But, how about Hollywood? Well, no one is saying.
Zach D’Onofrio is good at keeping secrets.
Once America’s hottest television show, “Idol” is back for the start of its comeback season this Sunday. March 11 , 8 p.m., on ABC-TV (WFTS-TV Channel 11 locally).
At the D’Onofrio home, friends and family will gather in that living room again, this time sharing Zach’s voice with the world. Everyone will see the audition for the first time, including Zach.
“I am kind of nervous about how I’ll look,” he says, sitting under a green shade at the Starbucks on S.R. 56 near the Shops at Wiregrass, surrounded by a caffeinated crowd that has no idea that, possibly, the next “American Idol” sits among them.
A junior at Wiregrass Ranch High, Zach was one of the hundreds to audition for “Idol” at Florida Hospital Center Ice back in August 2017. He was one of 25 to continue on to auditions in Orlando two weeks later. And, he also was one of 16 who flew to New York City in October for a chance to sing in front of this season’s “Idol” judges — pop/soul legend Lionel Richie, country star Luke Bryan and perky pop performer Katy Perry.
“I can post about it now (on Facebook) that I auditioned, and can tell people that I have gone to New York for the show,” Zach says. “A lot of kids know that, like my close friends, but they don’t know anything past that. Some kids sitting next to me in classes don’t know. People don’t know that I danced with Katy Perry.”
* * *
Wait…what?
His father just shakes his head and smiles. Yes, it really happened. It only took 10 seconds of “The Way You Look Tonight” to drop open the jaws of the judges, and another 10 seconds after that, Perry was dancing her way towards Zach. Richie stood and danced as well, and Bryan couldn’t help but join in.
Zach maintained his poise, and continued singing, even as he and Perry danced together.
“I just kept going,” he says. “We were dancing. I twirled her, I dipped her, things like that. Kept singing.”
“Dipped her,” says Zach’s dad, shaking his head and beaming proudly, with maybe a tinge of jealousy. “My man!”
If it wasn’t his voice that prompted Perry to dance with Zach, maybe it was his “socks appeal.” Socks are kind of Zach’s thing. He has a collection of 50 pairs or so of uniquely designed footwear. He brought pairs for each judge — American flag socks for show host Ryan Seacrest, skulls for Richie, roosters for Bryan.
For Perry, her socks depicted cats sitting on rainbows shooting lasers from their eyes, which sounds like a description of some of her videos. It was, Zach says, the perfect choice, and she wore them on her hands while she danced with him.
“It broke the ice,” Zach says. “It definitely made things easier.”
* * *
It is only natural that Zach would discover his talent for singing.
Bryan and Darci met at a concert at the Happy Gospel Center in Bradenton. Bryan was in a band with other family members called Southern Praise, and they were the headliners that day. He was the eligible bachelor of the group, and his sister joked to the crowd that, “if you can feed him, you can have him.”
Darci thought Bryan was a wonderful singer. When it was her turn to sing later that day, she was nervous thinking he might be watching. She wrote him a letter afterward, he wrote back, and one year later, they were married.
Zach and his older sister, Taylor, were born into music. Taylor embraced it, performing and singing at a young age, and Zach remembers singing “Oh, Holy Night” with his family at a Christmas church service when he was eight.
But, for the most part, he hung back and mostly played youth soccer, even making the junior varsity team at Wiregrass Ranch High.
Four years ago, his parents, who both work full-time at North Tampa Behavioral Health on S.R. 56 in Wesley Chapel, started the Dreamhouse Theatre. They performed shows at various locales before settling at their current location in Lutz.
Zach was working the lights for a production of the “Little Shop of Horrors” in October 2016, when he was struck by how much fun all the performers seemed to be having. He decided afterward he would surprise his family with a Frank Sinatra song in the living room that night.
After that, Zach took his first role as Benjamin in “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.” Bryan played Joseph, and Darci and Taylor also were in the production.
“Oh my gosh, it was so exciting seeing him getting into it,” Bryan says. “He had a solo in the show, and just nailed it. I was so excited to see him shine.”
Zach took on roles as one of the three little pigs in “Shrek,” and played Lord Farquaad in “Shrek The Musical Jr.,” sitting on his knees the whole show. “That was probably my favorite,” he says. “I wondered why I waited so long to do this.”
At Wiregrass Ranch, he joined the chorus this school year, ready to refine the talent he had unleashed the year before. His teacher originally thought by the sound of his speaking voice that Zach would be singing tenor, until he showed off the rich, deep sound that surprises so many.
“He’s very talented, but it wasn’t something I heard from the very, very beginning,’’ says Wiregrass Ranch fifth-year choral director Solangi Santiago. “Every now and then, though, we could see that this kid had something special.”
Then, one day, a friend sent Zach a link to sign up to audition for “Idol” at Florida Hospital Center Ice, where he took his first steps in the hope of becoming the next big thing.
* * *
Given a choice of audition spots after getting through the Wesley Chapel and Orlando stages of the audition process, Zach selected New York, an obvious pick, considering his crooner style and affection for Sinatra, which he developed after buying old vinyl records of the legend on shopping excursions with his father.
It was Darci, however, who got to go on the Sunday-through-Wednesday trip with him, the first trip to New York for both of them, and they stared wide-eyed at everything around them for three days. They visited the Statue of Liberty and the 9-11 Memorial, Facetiming the best moments with Bryan and Taylor.
“I made him sing ‘New York New York’ in the middle of Times Square,” Darci says.
Outside the judges room at the Hotel Pennsylvania in midtown Manhattan, Darci was all nerves, while inside, her teenage son was taking a giant bite of the Big Apple — dancing with a pop princess while impressively, considering the circumstances, remembering all the words to his song.
“I didn’t faint,” Zach joked.
For three minutes, Darci strained to hear her son sing. The television cameras were trained on her, and she looked at them and asked: “Have you ever had a mom pass out before?”
What little she says she could hear of Zach, she liked.
“He sounded incredible, like never before,” Darci says.
Afterward, he told her he thought it was his best audition yet.
Did he have a golden ticket in his hand when he told her?
“You have to tune in March 11,” he says, smiling. “You may see me on the show.”
Zach D’Onofrio is good at keeping secrets.
