Editors’ Picks: Newsmakers

Chris Olsen packed a lot into 2023. The social media star from Chevy Chase won awards, launched a business and advocated for mental health, all the while growing the total number of followers on his TikTok (@chris) and Instagram (@chrisolsen) accounts to 13.9 million.

In August, Olsen, 26, received a Streamy Award for short-form content. He was invited to perform at a U.S. Surgeon General event at the Kennedy Center in September, was named the 2023 Pride Ambassador for AIDS research foundation amfAR, and was part of the red carpet show at the Cannes Film Festival. He finished the year by being named to Forbes’ “30 Under 30” list in the social media category.

Building off his TikTok series where he delivered coffee to celebrities including Vice President Kamala Harris and singer Katy Perry, Olsen launched Flight Fuel, his own line of coffee.

“It’s been a big year for my personal and professional growth,” Olsen said in an email. “Through travel and finding my footing in new business ventures, I found confidence creating content that is authentic to me.”

Olsen is a certified group fitness trainer and was about to teach his first class when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. He began to create content online and gained a following. In 2020, he was named People magazine’s Sexiest Guy
on TikTok.

Now living in Los Angeles and New York, Olsen acknowledges his hometown roots. He attended Blessed Sacrament and St. Albans schools in Northwest Washington, D.C., performing in plays at Imagination Stage and Glen Echo Park. “I got my start in the arts [in the DMV],” Olsen said via email. “Having an introduction to theater from a young age cultivated my love for performing and entertaining. I’m thankful for the artistic culture that the D.C. area has to offer as it started me on this path.”

Best Buzzy Star with a MoCo Connection

For Issa Rae, 2023 was a big year: She was elected to the top job in Barbie Land. More precisely, the 38-year-old actor was cast as President Barbie in the live-action smash hit movie Barbie,which was released last summer. Rae also plays a superhero in a movie that came out last May, voicing Jess Drew, a pregnant Spider-Woman, in Netflix’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. Rae, who was born in Los Angeles, spent part of her childhood in Potomac, attending Cold Spring Elementary School in the gifted and talented program before returning to L.A. for high school. Earlier in her career, Rae garnered attention in the web series The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl and starred for five seasons in the HBO series Insecure, which she co-created and co-wrote. This past October, Rae raised a glass to a new venture with E. & J. Gallo Winery. She is promoting a new line of prosecco, with a nod to her name: Viarae.

Best Local ‘Housewife’ Drama

It’s Season 8 for The Real Housewives of Potomac, with Nneka Ihim, 36, a lawyer with Nigerian roots, becoming the eighth woman to join the cast. Leading up to the fall premiere, the Bravo reality show teased viewers with one-line zingers from the cast, including, “You don’t have to dig for gold when you shine this bright” (Ashley Darby) and “I’m no angel, but give me some grace and you’ll learn to adore me” (Gizelle Bryant). What does newcomer Ihim have to say? “Nigeria raised me, L.A. made me, and Potomac will remember me.” In the first episode, Ihim dons a tiara and sash and is referred to as a “new grande dame of Potomac,” while longtime cast member Karen Huger quips, “If it were only that simple.” Ihim is not only new to the show—she and her doctor husband have just moved to the area, where they are renovating a 6,000-square-foot home. She talks openly on camera about struggles to conceive their first child, including ovulation tracking and her daily regimen of taking vitamins with a glass of Champagne. As the season progresses, so does tension between Ihim and the other Nigerian American cast member, Wendy Osefo. Ihim brings her unabashed confidence to the ensemble, declaring: “I come as I am. And what I am, honey, is remarkable.”

Best Glimpse Into the Past

Just off West Montgomery Avenue in downtown Rockville, the Stonestreet Museum of 19th Century Medicine celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2023. Clarence Hickey brings the historic one-room country doctor’s office to life by portraying Dr. Edward Stonestreet, who practiced in Rockville from 1852 until his death in 1903.

“It’s a little place that has a big story behind it,” says Hickey, a 79-year-old retired biologist from Rockville who has volunteered as a docent at the museum since the late 1990s. “Edward Stonestreet was all things to all people. He was the physician, the surgeon, pharmacist, the deliverer of babies, the responder to accidents.”

Wearing his hat, wool suit, vest and pants (all buttons, no zippers), Hickey says serving as a first-person interpreter of Stonestreet is an effective way to educate visitors. “I have heard, seen and experienced that people who visit museums think that a docent who is in character and costume is more knowledgeable and informed than one who isn’t,” says Hickey, who gives presentations at schools and retirement facilities in the community, as well as on-site.

Stonestreet’s office was donated to the Montgomery County Historical Society and moved to its current location in 1972. “It helps people understand [more about] the way [things] used to be, the way things have improved in science and medicine,” Hickey says. “When I tell his story, it’s not just about Edward Stonestreet. It’s an American story.”