From those beginnings of only seeing plays on PBS or VHS to now being Tony Award winner, how would you say you’ve changed?
It’s profoundly gratifying on a local level, you know, to have a dream come true. It is something I wish for everybody on planet earth. Everybody deserves to have at least a dream come true because a profound thing happens when a dream comes true. It made me a better person, artist and man.
The show’s tagline is “The story of America then, told by America now.” If someone wrote a show about the year 2020, how do you think that story would be told?
I think of this young girl that worked quite hard to get to me. She said to me, “My friends and I talk about the fact that Hamilton is not all that revolutionary. We think it’s just a bunch of people of color being used to tell White people stories again. What do you think of that? I told her that someone is going to come along and write the show that makes Hamilton look quaint. Lin wrote the thing he wanted to write, and I acted in the thing I wanted to act in. It’s now your responsibility to write the thing you want to see.
We don’t know who’s going to pick up the pen and write the story about 2020, but I’m curious about it. Who’s centered on it? What language will it be written in? I’m also curious about who is being used to tell it. I hope I live long enough to see that show.
Check out the trailer for Hamilton below.
