0:00
Ooh, la, la, la, we wait. Ooh, let's go. Oh my gosh. Hey. Nice to meet you, man. Nice to meet you.
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0:12
Um, you know, I've been a fan from a distance for a while and um, but your music has been very present in your art has been very present in our house.
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Um, and I, you know, what you've achieved over the course of the last 10 plus years, but but primarily in the last five or six as the world has caught up, uh, has been nothing short of incredible.
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So, you know, half congratulations to you from me to you, man. much.
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So, we've got a lot to get into and a lot of music to play.
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Um, but most importantly right now, we you got to remind people that, uh, you know, you're giving a gift to the world and we need gifts right now.
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We need art to to to show up.
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We don't My line is I never expect art to show up, but I respect it when it does.
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Um, because I because artists need the space to make that decision themselves and not be pushed into a corner, but um, I I guess that space allowed you, um, the the the head space and the and the the environment to be able to decide to bring the Hamilton movie, um, you know, the capture of the of the show forward and to move with the times, right?
1:03
And to just throw the whole schedule up in the air and say, "No, now's the time."
1:07
Yeah, I mean, we all just got the news that there's there's really not going to be any theater in the US for the rest of the year.
1:14
Uh, and um, it just felt like, well, we we're sitting on a big love letter to live theater.
1:20
I mean, if if Hamilton is nothing else, it is a love letter to hip hop and it's a love letter to musical theater.
1:25
And Tommy's film of it, it's it's what it it's what it felt like in that room it during that sort of magic year when we got to do the show.
1:32
And so, um, at a time when none of us can gather, the fact that we have this sort of love letter to gathering and hearing a story is is really cool.
1:41
So, I want to sort of like how that emotion felt for you going over the performance and you talked about that magic year and you moved on.
1:46
Like, the Hamilton continued, but you just took off.
1:50
And I suppose in a weird way, you've had to go home and watching this film and finishing this film and it must be been emotional for you.
1:57
I I think the great joy of this has been reconnecting with that company.
2:00
And uh because, you know, it is like a family.
2:06
Like there's the folks you talk to every day, and there's the folks you see at the cookout, and there's the folks you only see on Christmas. Yeah.
2:13
And sort of reconnecting with everyone cuz you know, when I watch the movie, I have this weird double vision.
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I'm enjoying the things I hadn't seen before and the um the things I never could have seen from inside the show.
2:24
And I'm also remembering oh, here's where I used to freestyle with David because it's our only moment to connect offstage in act two.
2:32
Or oh, here's where I would you know, watch Ephraim do push-ups before he got on stage.
2:37
You know, it it's like I I I also have my backstage traffic that I'm also uh feeling and remembering and all these stories I haven't thought about in years sort of flooding back of like you know, you talk about hyperfocus like Yeah.
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we were strapped to a rocket and we still had to do eight shows a week.
2:56
So, that kept us humble and that kept us sane and we kept each other sane through what could have been a really crazy what what what was a crazy year. It was a crazy time.
3:04
I like I don't know how you do it, and I I've said this to my friends in in theater before.
3:10
You know, the quality and consistency required in order to achieve in theater is is nothing short than uh short of incredible.
3:15
When you're focused on that one thing and and you've got so much wrapped up in it and and last night's performance, which was the best performance of your life, means nothing if tonight is not great.
3:25
It's a yoga and you're going to hit the same positions every time, but some of them might feel a little worse today or some of them like might be amazing today, but it's never going to be the same.
3:35
Uh and also like the people who are coming to see the show tonight, they don't care about how good it was last night.
3:42
Yeah, they don't want to hear everyone else's review.
3:43
It's like give me the Yeah. Yeah. You're a restaurant.
3:45
You matter as much as the dish right now.
3:49
I was talking to Josh Gad about this and he was he was he was talking about his time in Mormon and about the famous time that he lost his his balance and lost his lines and lost his way and it was just like ah and admitted who it was that threw him off and it was this funny little moment we had.
4:00
And I wondered if that ever happened to you and what that feels like and if it's is it just the most stomach churning moment of all time? Every night.
4:08
I I cannot think of a night where I did a perfect show.
4:10
Whether it was choreography or it was you know, that's that's the harder thing to do because there's just so many words in the show and that's my fault.
4:21
It is entirely your fault.
4:23
It's entirely like who do I who can I look around to blame?
4:26
Did you ever think how hard it was going to be when you were writing it?
4:28
Did you think cuz cuz a lot of artists don't think that when they're making albums, right?
4:32
They go I'm just going to make it.
4:33
I'll worry about performing it live later but it did cross your mind.
4:36
I'm painfully like attuned to actors having what they need.
4:38
So all of the last rewrites and stuff when we were in previews were mine.
4:42
I was just like I'll deal with my later.
4:43
I don't want anyone else to have to deal with changes or having to memorize something at the last second.
4:48
And so Hamilton's final monologue is the last is like one of the last things I wrote because I just thought it's my problem. I'll deal with it.
4:55
And I'll be able to perform it once I've written it.
4:58
So it really was more like masochistic.
4:59
It was just sort of like giving myself the harder stuff and saving my work for last because I wouldn't have as much trouble memorizing as someone who's getting it fresh and wasn't going through the thought process of writing it.
5:12
It does make absolute sense and it's also quite an empathetic approach if I may say.
5:15
You know, you call it masochistic.
5:16
It's actually empathetic and you know, a lot of great directors, producers artists, they will put the people who write with them before themselves because also they know they can carry it.
5:24
And that's not to say others couldn't but you're challenging yourself to do the work that needs to be done and if you can't be the one that steps up and does it, how can you expect anyone else to follow you? Right.
5:32
It's such an achievement vocally, you know, in terms of the words and in terms of the way that you took liberties with the actual historical context of some of the characters in order to try to inspire and and and didn't make it feel odd cuz that could have felt odd.
5:44
That could have felt like you it was revisionist history but it It felt like fact and fiction coming together in some crazy hybrid and and you got away with it.
5:51
Were there times you were nervous about that aspect of it, the fact that you wanted to kind of recreate aspects of it that were really uncomfortable?
5:57
I was I was totally paralyzed by it, to be honest.
5:59
Just the sheer tonnage of it, you know, you read this book and Hamilton is this character and then you read this story and he's a different person.
6:07
You know, historians can take the same set of facts and create a totally different person.
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And so that became one of the themes of the show.
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And then my interest in his story forms its own spine and and my interest as I sort of started was his own relentlessness.
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Like he's just a freight train.
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Um and Burr is someone who's had the same traumas and the same childhood but is scared to move.
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And so what happens when a train meets someone who's scared to move and they change each other.
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Um and so that that became that became kind of that revealed itself amidst all of the research you have to do and all of the biographies you have to read.
6:46
One of the biggest challenges I think when you're creating something that that that brings art and history together is that history changes shape.
6:51
History is not as cut and dry as like that is history.
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And we're seeing that very evidently right now.
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We're watching statues that meant something to to to local communities now being pulled down and defaced because what they actually represent in the modern age and moving forward is something all more painful and more difficult.
7:09
And so when you recontextualize history even with the best of intentions, you know, you might meet yourself 50 years down the line and and that intention may be taken a different way. Does that make sense? And so yeah.
7:19
And it's a theme of our show, right?
7:22
Hamilton did what he did and then he's outlived by people who did not agree with him.
7:27
Uh and they all become president. Yeah.
7:30
But also in the larger movement of like, you know, things that are that were original sins in our country.
7:35
Like slavery's an original sin, a brutal system in which every character in our show is complicit.
7:42
Reputations rise and fall and um and that's that's one of the themes of the show and that's something we're grappling with right now as we are you know, grappling with what that statue means to some Americans versus black Americans who were oppressed when that guy was in charge.
7:58
I think it's it's an it's an absolutely important conversation to be having.
8:03
I just want to, you know, broad question, you know, what your emotions have been and how you felt now, you know, reviewing it and going through it like this and beyond the back the behind the scenes stuff that you recognize but just perhaps taking the chance to recognize the impact that Hamilton has had and watching the influence it's had on your peers and on other theater groups and other playwrights and other and other songwriters.
8:24
Yeah, it's it's a lot and I and I have to say it didn't really sink in the first year because I was enjoying the fruit of seven years of writing.
8:33
I finally got to perform the thing.
8:36
It wasn't in my head anymore. It was in the world.
8:41
And there's no describing what that feeling is.
8:44
To like get it off your desk and and out into the populace and then the thing that kept me humble and kept me from letting the larger impact in was I got a show tomorrow night.
8:54
I got two shows on Saturday.
8:58
And so And do you know what's working at the time while you're doing those shows?
9:00
Do you get a sense that you you know, that it's connecting? That the zeitgeist Yes.
9:05
Yeah, I mean the internet was showing up at our shows.
9:08
Like People who were heroes of mine in various fields were showing up and the the crowd outside the theater became almost untenable.
9:18
Just people waiting to see me walk in. Like who was the one?
9:20
Like who was the one that you saw in the crowd and you were just like Oh my god.
9:25
It was It was an aggregate.
9:25
It was early at the public and it was Busta Rhymes was in the front row.
9:30
And that's one of my favorite rappers and of all time.
9:35
lyricist and lyricist and I was just like and it was so important to me that he liked the show.
9:38
So, I was like, don't look at Busta Rhymes.
9:40
Don't look at Busta Rhymes. I love the show, B. I love the show, B.
9:45
So, I look up to not look at him, and Mandy Patinkin is sitting a row above him, who is the Busta Rhymes of musical theater.
9:52
Like, he's George, he's Che, he's I just got this image of Mandy Patinkin doing this the famous scenario verse, you know? Oh, my god.
10:04
Raw raw with the dungeon dragon and the high tenor. Um raw raw raw.
10:07
I can't even do I can't do a good Mandy Patinkin, but if I could, man, that would be a raw No one can.
10:11
That's why he's Mandy Patinkin.
10:13
Um but the but yeah, so that was like one where it was like literally like one from each art form I was in love with, and they were sitting a basically atop each other, and I I had nowhere to look.
10:24
Um that was that was an early one that was very meaningful.
10:27
You know, hip-hop really showed up really quickly and recognized you were coming from an authentic place, and that's music that speaks for community, speaks for culture, and it speaks for entertainment, but he it's not it's not just the third one. It's not.
10:35
And it's really important that, you know, when you step into that environment that you you be the most authentic self you can be, and you also represent the the music and the culture as authentically as you can.
10:46
And and that's how you get respect, and it must have been really rewarding for you as well at times to know that aside from being a fantastic fantastic slice of musical theater, a game-changing production, that a huge part of the inspiration behind what made you want to do it, respected it, loved it, wanted to see it, and loved what you were doing with it.
11:02
Yeah, I mean, hip-hop's the language of revolution, and it's our greatest American art form, and uh so, to me, that was the initial impulse.
11:09
You know, it was it was the the fact that Hamilton got everywhere on the strength of his writing, and that's what made me that that was the whole idea was well, that's what my favorite MCs do.
11:20
They they write so brilliantly that they transcend their circumstances, and they change the world.
11:26
Like, literally through their power of their pen and their delivery and their oratory.
11:30
Um and so, that's that's the fundamental idea in it.
11:33
Um, and so, uh that's why it's a it's such a love letter to hip-hop.
11:39
That's why there's so many hip-hop references in the show, whether it's Biggie or Mobb Deep or um, you know, uh DMX.
11:44
Uh, there's there's they're just peppered throughout.
11:47
Um, and uh you know, creating the precedent of like clearances for a musical. Uh, because we did. I went and did the work.
11:57
I was like, "No, no, this can take I want the kids who just only know musical theater, when they pick up their liner notes, they see contains a sample from 10 Crack Commandments by Notorious B. I. G."
12:07
Like, I wanted to give credit where credit was due.
12:10
Did you have to reach out to Puff for that?
12:11
We had to reach out for for everyone.
12:13
You know, and I'm sure my agents were like, "Why can't you just write it and not sample anybody?"
12:16
I was like, "Well, no, but that's part of what this is is that it If you like this musical, you owe it to yourself uh to to listen to the hip-hop that you may maybe weren't listening to.
12:27
Um, because that's that's the reason this exists is is my love for for for hip-hop.
12:34
Someone called you up tomorrow and said, "Hey, listen, theater's opening.
12:35
We've we've got it all wrong.
12:36
The virus was uh we we got it wrong. Everybody's fine.
12:39
We're opening the theater tomorrow. We want to celebrate.
12:40
We want to bring Hamilton back for one night only.
12:41
We need you to We need you to step back in the shoes. Come on, man. Theater's coming back.
12:46
It's opening night for the world. Hamilton's coming back. Would you do it?"
12:51
I've been growing my hair out for just the occasion.
12:55
Lin-Manuel Miranda, it's been great to talk to you. Thank you for your time.
12:58
Thanks for the music and have a great day wherever you are.
13:00
All the best to you, sir. Likewise. It was a great. Thanks.