Local News

Drag performer Andi Van Dyke was recording in a blueberry muffin costume when a meteor boomed across Massachusetts Saturday afternoon.

When Medford-based drag performer Andi Van Dyke agreed to clean out their car last Sunday, there was one condition: it had to become content. What followed was an accidental brush with cosmic history and nearly a million views on Instagram.

Van Dyke, 29, was outside filming themselves wearing a muffin costume, and jumped in the air when a boom rattled the neighborhood. On screen, Van Dyke looked at the camera wide-eyed and jaw-dropped.

“Was that me?” they asked jokingly.

“Power of the muffin man,” the camera person replied.

The moment was posted to Instagram with the on-screen caption, “POV a meteor hits while you’re filming muffin content.” It went viral almost immediately.

“It’s almost at a million views, which is crazy,” Van Dyke said Monday in an interview with Boston.com.

The boom, which had initially perplexed Bay Staters, turned out to be the sonic boom produced by a bolide meteor, a spectacle that rattled windows and drew emergency vehicles across the region. At the time, Van Dyke had no idea what they’d witnessed.

“We thought it was really powerful thunder,” they said. “Then we saw a bunch of emergency vehicles racing down our street, and so we weren’t sure if it was an explosion of some kind, maybe something collapsed, or lightning struck something. We had no idea what it was until we got inside and started searching for it.”

It was Van Dyke’s girlfriend who caught the moment on camera and suggested they share it on social media.

“We watched it back and were like, you know, timing is everything — let’s just post it.”

The muffin costume itself has a backstory befitting its new viral fame. Van Dyke had worn it for a food-themed show a few weeks earlier, where they portrayed a villainous, Godzilla-style muffin man. Like many of Van Dyke’s performance pieces, it had simply been living in the back of their car ever since.

“I fully do not clean out my car, so costumes tend to build up,” Van Dyke said with a laugh. “My girlfriend mentioned the car needed to be cleaned out. I said only if we can make content about it.”

As for what all of this means for their career? Van Dyke is leaning into it.

“This is how I get my big break,” they said. “I am the muffin man. I’ve been pigeonholed — finally.”

Van Dyke is happy the video offered a little levity.

“This has just been a funny couple of days,” they said. “I’m glad that we could make something joyful and funny out of the news cycle, because I know it’s hard to do that these days.”