Allison Strong

Allison Trujillo Strong is an American pop singer, songwriter, and actress of stage, television and film. She first gained notice for her Broadway work in the musicals Bye Bye Birdie and Mamma Mia!, has done voice-over work on the Nickelodeon's animated children's television program Dora and Friends, and appeared in other television series such as The Blacklist, and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. She gained wider exposure with her first feature film, playing Adam Sandler's daughter Sarah in The Week Of.

Strong began acting at age 7, and won a national jingle-singing competition for Oscar Mayer at age 11. She appeared in local productions in and around her home of Union City, New Jersey since childhood, in venues such as the Park Performing Arts Center and Montclair State University, where she majored in musical theater. She is also a poetry reciter. She has performed at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center and on the morning TV show Good Morning America, for numerous governors of New Jersey, as well as at the White House and for Colombian President Álvaro Uribe. A Colombian American herself, she writes and performs vocals in both English and Spanish, and composes on both piano and acoustic guitar.

Strong's debut, dual-language album, March Towards the Sun, was released August 31, 2014 to positive reviews. In 2015, she played Ado Annie Carnes in an Annandale-on-Hudson, New York production of Oklahoma!, for which she garnered praise by The New York Times.

Early life and career Allison Trujillo Strong was born in Hoboken, New Jersey. She grew up in Union City, where her mother worked for 39 years as a school psychologist for the Union City Board of Education before her retirement.

Her great-grandfather, Rubén, who died in the 1940s, made his living in Colombia as a poet for the national periodical El Colombiano, an activity in which Strong herself developed a strong interest and connection to him. Strong grew up in a Spanish-speaking household and spoke only Spanish until an incident in a store. As Strong explains, "A woman yelled at my mother and told her that she should be ashamed of herself for not teaching me English, since I'd need it in school...From that point on, she only spoke to me in English. But once I got to high school, I decided to throw myself into the English as a Second Language program and took Spanish classes with all of the kids who had just come to this country, and it forced me to learn."

At age three, Strong was given a dollar store microphone with an echo function, which kindled her interest in singing. at the John Harms Center for the Arts (now the Bergen Performing Arts Center) in Englewood. From grades 1 - 8, Strong attended Woodrow Wilson School (now known as Sara M. Gilmore), an arts-integrated school

Strong began her singing career in the contest circuit at age 9, when she won New Jersey Network (NJN)'s Hispanic Youth Showcase with the first show tune she ever learned, "Much More" from The Fantasticks. She would go on to win that competition three times, later hosting an Emmy-winning show for the channel. At age 10, Strong joined the Park Players of Union City, an acting troupe based out of Union City's Park Performing Arts Center. She received professional vocal training, and learned to sing opera, eventually becoming member of the Metropolitan Opera Children's Chorus. The same year she appeared in the Metropolitan Opera's Carmen.

By age 13 Strong appeared in the Park Players' May 20, 2004 production of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, her fifth production with the Park Players.

On April 7 and 8, 2006, Strong, while a sophomore at Union Hill High School, appeared in the school's production of Annie Get Your Gun.

On March 27, 2008, Strong won the statewide Poetry Out Loud competition, a contest sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the Poetry Foundation, in which students recited and performed poems of their choosing. Strong beat over 5,000 students from 44 high schools and one home-schooled student. Strong earned $1,500 in scholarship and awards, and praise from the judges, who noted, "Strong elegantly relates the mounting tone from astute humor to quiet triumph." Strong's performance of the William Shakespeare sonnet “My Mistress’ Eyes are Nothing Like the Sun” appears as the fifth segment of a DVD compilation of the 2006 – 2007 finals that was released that November for schools and teachers.

In June 2008, Strong graduated from high school, where she was that school's final salutatorian before it was converted to Union Hill Middle School. Following graduation, she attended the Cali School of Music at Montclair State University, where she majored in musical theater.

In September 2008, Strong participated in the NEA's Sixth Annual Poetry Pavilion at the National Book Festival. On March 28 and April 5, 2009 she played Jo March in a production of Little Women at the Studio Playhouse in Montclair, New Jersey. was produced at the Henry Miller's Theatre in Manhattan, and debuted on October 15 of that year, marking Strong's Broadway debut. Commented Strong, "I'm making my Broadway debut at the same age Julie Andrews and Liza Minnelli did. To get my big break so young…is a little frightening, but it assures me that performing is what I was born to do.” Strong took a six-month break from school in order to focus on rehearsals. To promote the show, Strong and her castmates performed their rendition of the song “Honestly Sincere” on the morning TV show Good Morning America.

In 2010, during her freshman year at Montclair, Strong was a writer for Backstage magazine's "Take 5" column. By 2010, Strong had performed solo for every governor of New Jersey since Christie Todd Whitman, as well as at the White House for President George W. Bush, and for Colombian President Álvaro Uribe.

On May 27, 2011, Strong sang at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center's Victoria Theater as part of the 2011 NJN Hispanic Youth Showcase, in celebration of the Showcase's 25th anniversary, and in honor of the Showcase's first participants and the memory of music teacher Perla Espinal. The show was broadcast on NJN on June 29, 2011.

June 2011 saw the debut of Perks, a musical webseries described by Playbill as "Glee meets Wii", in which Strong stars as Courtney, the object of affection for geeky high school gamer Josh (Alex Wyse), the series’ male lead, who is too shy to express his feelings to her.

In August 2011, Strong auditioned for the Broadway musical Mamma Mia!, on the advice of Bye Bye Birdie'''s musical director. A week later she was cast as a temporary replacement for a cast member who had suffered a concussion. Strong sang all 23 songs in the production, learned multiple dance numbers, and was the understudy for Ali, the supportive best friend of the show's main character, Sophie.

On June 2, 2012, Strong sang the American National Anthem and the Colombian National Anthem at the opening of Union City's Columbia Park, which celebrated the city's Colombian American population, before a crowd that included Union City Mayor Brian P. Stack and the city's Commissioners.

In 2013 Strong was one of 14 applicants selected to attend the week-long Johnny Mercer Foundation Songwriter's Project at Northwestern University in Chicago, a workshop for promising American songwriters. That July Strong played Captain Jess Hartline in the off-Broadway play Volleygirls, The following month saw the release of Strong's debut EP album, Rewind, In analyzing the title track "Rewind", whose lyrics describe making amends with a lover, Katie Lebert of Gadfly Online stated, "In her revealing chorus 'Can I apologize for what I have realized?', Strong accurately encapsulates the guilt and indecision we may face near the end of a failing relationship. A truthful, memorable track, Strong immediately proves that sincerity and emotion."

In November 2013, Strong won the Top Female Solo and People's Choice awards at the Hoboken Music Awards. The following month she performed at Rockwood Music Hall in Manhattan. Not long after, actor/director/producer Diego Luna flew Strong to Bogotá, Colombia to appear in an episode of Back Home, a documentary TV series on the Fusion network that follows a different celebrity guest each week on "an intimate and emotional voyage to their family's country of origin." Strong subsequently appeared in Under My Skin, a comedy written by Robert Sternin and Prudence Fraser, who were the creative forces behind TV series such as Who's The Boss? and The Nanny. The show opened May 15, 2014 at the Little Shubert Theatre.

Strong's debut, dual-language album, March Towards the Sun, was released August 31, 2014 on iTunes, Amazon, Google Play and Spotify.

August 2014 also saw the premiere of Nickelodeon's animated children's television program Dora and Friends, on which Strong provided the voices

In 2015, Strong played Ado Annie Carnes in an Annandale-on-Hudson, New York production of Oklahoma!, for which she sang "I Cain't Say No". Her work garnered praise by Ben Brantley of The New York Times, who called her performance "captivating".

On June 16, 2023, Strong released her next album, the six-track Brontë, which features the single "La luna". The accompanying music video was produced by Brett Parnell and featured Stanley Martin, an alumnus of the musical Aladdin.

Wider exposure in television and film On February 4, 2016 Strong appeared in "Alistair Pitt", the 13th episode of the third season of the NBC crime thriller TV series The Blacklist. In the episode, Strong plays Alicia Vacarro, the daughter of a mafia boss who agrees to be married off to the son of a rival mafia family in order to avert a mob war.

Strong gained wider exposure with her first feature film role, playing Sarah, the daughter of Adam Sandler's character, in the 2018 Netflix film The Week Of, which was directed by Robert Smigel, and which garnered her the "Homegrown Music Video" award at the Garden State Film Festival in New Jersey.

In 2023, Strong provided the voice for Mrs. Salinas in the animated Netflix film Leo, reuniting her with Adam Sandler. Strong said of the experience, "I played his daughter in The Week Of''. Joining this team is like being back with my family again because right before the pandemic, we released that film. Then, the pandemic happened and then we started recording this. I found out about it in September 2020, so it's been over three years; just wild. It's a crazy cast, but more than anything, it's a crazy amazing group of nice and kind people to work with, and I'm very grateful to them."

Teaching Like her mother, Strong worked in the school system, mentioning in a 2023 interview that she had served as a substitute teacher years prior. She has also worked as a teaching artist, doing Broadway master classes. having initially exhibited a guitar-driven country style, before later shifting more towards piano accompaniments.

Personal life Strong's favorite authors include Emily Dickinson, Mitch Albom, and Jane Austen. She enjoys baking, playing the piano, performing the national anthem at events, and hosting a show on a local television channel.

Filmography