I'm the nap champion.
I think for a lot of us, you know, what 'Hamilton' gave us the opportunity to, what it gave me the opportunity to do, was to go, 'Here's what I've learned in 35 years.'
They're people who had flaws and who had affairs and had sex and had scandals, and very rarely do we look at the totality of our heroes' lives.
You need to put your head down and... try not to lose hope.
It's not about doing something that's as big as 'Hamilton.' That may never happen again, and that's okay.
The only reason to keep talking about history is if you are juxtaposing it with the world that we live in today, if you are learning something about our world by looking at the way they shaped their world.
I have a great foundation, a great training foundation. But it took me a long time to let the training go.
That was the bat signal for me - 'Rent' changed my life. It took me years before I got beyond that show.
The bad guys have way more fun, in my opinion. 'Bad guys' in quotes.
What is the future going to say about us now? What are our kids going to look at us and say, 'How could you not stop that person from getting into power? How could you not stop that environmental disaster that you saw coming a mile away?'
You gotta prove yourself. I'm not above that. I will never be above that. Bring it!
I kind of think we sort of subconsciously draw things into our lives, whatever we're trying to work through.
I'm addicted to growth.
'Rent' opened up my heart, my senses. I was never the same. I hadn't been back in that place in the same way since. 'Hamilton' put me back in that place.
Josh Gad was in my class. Katy Mixon. Griffin Matthews. Josh Groban - he ended up leaving to become a huge star, but he was in our class in freshman year. I remember Josh was this nerdy kid in a turtleneck with a voice from heaven.
I grew up in Philadelphia in a time where we took it for granted that we were supposed to be young and gifted and black. It was a culture of excellence - and all my friends were more talented than I was.
I know it's hard for people to imagine a time when 'Hamilton' wasn't 'Hamilton,' but for years, it was just this little thing that I was telling people about that didn't make any sense to anybody as I was describing it. But I loved it.
My dad was always in sales. My mom had a heart for the ages. Worked in recreation, doing rehabilitation in nursing homes. Very nice, practical folks who were very proud of me but had no inclination toward the stage in any way.
You hear a song like 'Wait For It,' you hear a song like 'Dear Theodosia' - if you get one of those songs in a musical - one - it's worth dropping everything to sing that one song.
I have to remind myself that it may never be this good again.
I grew up in Philadelphia.
I've done a lot of translation in TV, and I can do it. I'm trained to do it. I know how to inject a certain amount of my naturalness into that and where I come from into those things, but it helps if somebody's writing with my experience in mind.
I think that the best songs to sing are songs that you love, because you sing them with love when you love them.
I studied at Carnegie Mellon. I went there with a bunch of really, really talented kids.
I think it was, my parents got me a karaoke machine when I was about 9 years old. Even before that, they got me a tape recorder that I used to walk around my life with. And there was something about recording and then hearing myself back.
What a casting director does is they're a connector.
You gotta love this thing. Whatever you choose to pursue - medicine, law, writing, you have to love it. You study it, you eat it, you drink it, you try it, you do it, you love it in every way.
To get even realer with you for a second, as a black actor, as a performer of color, I don't know how many more roles like Aaron Burr are gonna come along for me.
There was a lot of the 'Hamilton' experience that was like a locomotive. It was a hurricane, so the apartment often looked like a hurricane. There were clothes and shoes all over. We were getting more things in than we had room for. We had to figure out how to make space for all the blessings and goodness coming toward us.
You can't judge the people that you play anyway; you leave that for somebody else to do.
I think art, at its best, happens on a conscious and a subconscious level.
When we go and cheer Cynthia Erivo on in 'The Color Purple,' it's because we've elected her to be our voice. She sings 'I'm Here' for all of us.
Donny Hathaway's 'For All We Know' is the song that I've sung the longest. It is a beautiful song about living in the moment and appreciating this very second. That is the song I did for my 'Rent' audition.
I don't have any control over the offers that are going to come to me or not come to me. But I can't go backward, and so that's what's tricky.
I've been in a long-term relationship, and I'll tell you, it's never boring! People trying to merge their lives together always run into challenges.
The record company felt wisely that we should get something out before I left 'Hamilton' or around awards time, and that deadline was not easy.
We want to pull out songs from the American song book, and we want to make them palatable for a modern audience.
I'm in no way running from 'Hamilton' or its success or these beautiful songs that I've been blessed to be able to be the one to introduce them. I certainly won't be the last to sing them, but to be the first, I feel very lucky.
I wanted to make an album that was hopeful and encouraging and inspiring. That was the goal.
I know what feeling broke feels like real well. I know that real well.
We're reminded yet again: we are stronger, we are smarter, we have more fun when we include each other - when we include as many perspectives as possible.
If you're an open channel when you're onstage, if you're just a vessel, things are going to come out that are stored away deep in your DNA.
It's about polarization. You're trying to stir up something in your audience.
It's still a political statement to stand on stage as a person of color and be excellent. We still need those images to combat the narrative we're often fed - as someone innately inferior or inexorably linked with lack.
I remember when I was in 'Rent,' Daphne Rubin-Vega threw a party. At the time, she had a loft in TriBeCa, and the elevator opened right into her apartment. I was like, 'I've never seen anything like that.' I didn't know it was possible.
I'm an artist, and I like art that gets people talking, good or bad. Criticism is good, too.
I haven't had a chance to decorate my dressing room yet, but I have these pictures of myself as a kid that I want to put up because I said, 'I really want to make sure that I take that kid with me on this journey.' I want him to experience this.
I had no vision of me being a part of that show ever. But I was committed to being the first super-fan of 'The Hamilton Mixtape' that there ever was. I was in love with this thing.
I haven't gotten hundreds of jobs that I've auditioned for.
