How a tubby little horse became a star of stage and screen — and the toast of NYC
nypost.comthe new book “The Star Horse” by Sarah Maslin Nir. “There’s not a lot of horses doing what he does, especially that breed,” Billy’s owner and trainer John Allegra, 72, told The Post of the in-demand steed, who lives on a farm in East Haddam, Connecticut.
Allegra first got Billy when he was 5-years-old with plans of making him a star. Billy cut his teeth attending weddings and town events before going Hollywood.
His big break came around 2017, when he was cast as a carriage horse for Hugh Jackman’s P.T. Barnum character in “The Greatest Showman.” “Billy is the greatest showman — he just [pulled] a carriage in the scene.
He wasn’t one of the circus animals although he could have been,” Allegra quipped. Maslin Nir met Billy in 2019, when she was reporting her book, “Horse Crazy.” She helped lead him on-stage at The Met in Giuseppe Verdi’s opera “Aida” which tells the story of love and betrayal against the backdrop of war.“It was one of those moments as a journalist that’s so unbelievable,” Maslin Nir recalled of the experience. “It sounds like something out of a children’s fairy tale.” Billy played an Egyptian war horse belonging to the romantic hero.
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