Leslie Odom Jr. returns to original role in smash hit musical 'Hamilton' on Broadway
Leslie Odom Jr. returns to original role in smash hit musical 'Hamilton' on Broadway
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Leslie Odom Jr. initially said 'no thank you' to 'One Night in Miami'
Leslie Odom Jr. chats with USA TODAY's Patrick Ryan about his portrayal of Sam Cooke in Regina King's "One Night in Miami."
Entertain This!, USA TODAY
Leslie Odom Jr. is returning to Broadway for a much anticipated "Hamilton" reprisal.
The actor, among the founding fathers of the musical itself, will return to his role as constitutional framer Aaron Burr starting in September, he revealed in a Monday appearance on the "Today" show. A brief stint in his most defining character, Odom will embody the former vice president for just 12 weeks.
"You don't get shows that run 10 years," Odom told host Savannah Guthrie, remarking on the longevity of "Hamilton" as a Theatre District favorite. "There's a lot of shows we love, great shows, that you know they come and they go. That's the nature of the theater."
'Hamilton' producers cancel shows at Kennedy Center after Trump administration takeover
"For something to be embraced by the public and the culture in the way that 'Hamilton' has … it's twice in a lifetime," he added.
Odom, who originated the role in Lin-Manuel Miranda's smash hit, won a Tony Award for his performance in 2016. Now, he's celebrating the show's 10th anniversary in style and, while stopping short of revealing the details, teased in his appearance on "Today" that there are plenty more surprises in store for audiences heading to a performance any time over the course of the year.
The musical, a lively hip-hop infused take on early American history, has become a cultural phenomenon and catapulted both Odom and Miranda from Broadway performers to true blue Hollywood stars.
'Hamilton' star Leslie Odom Jr. shares 5 life lessons he's learned in 'Failing Up'
Odom, who started on Broadway in "Rent" when he was 17, told "Today" that this moment in his career has him feeling reflective.
"The fact that I'm still doing it and that I get to do it in these pieces that mean so much to me is just very meaningful," he said.
"I knew how I felt about it, but I could not imagine that you (the audience) would feel the way that I did," he said of its enduring success, adding that the show's release for streaming on Disney+ during the pandemic added a whole new legion of young fans.
Audiences can see Odom in the role of Burr at the Richard Rodgers Theatre starting Sept. 9 through Nov. 23.
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I don't want the train to be about to take off and I'm just getting to the theater. I'm going to be the one to make sure that the train is ready to go. JONATHAN GROFF Our choreographer, Shannon Lewis, is a prolific Broadway dancer, but Just in Time was her choreographic debut. I've never really danced before this, and she was, 'I got you.' She gave me 10 weeks of dance lessons, three times a week, before the first day of rehearsal. She taught me this thirty-minute physical warm-up of five different songs that she has on a playlist, and I do it every day before doing the show. COLE ESCOLA Darren's wife. [laughs] Actually, there's this great interview where Zoe Caldwell is telling this anecdote about when she stepped in for Anne Bancroft in The Devils, and she's recalling a line off the cuff and turns her head and goes right into character. The lights don't actually change, but you feel like there's a lighting change and a temperature drop — I'm getting goosebumps now just thinking about it. But it reminded me, 'Oh, it's just about having immediate and free access to your imagination.' So, Darren's wife and Zoe Caldwell. SARAH SNOOK The vocal coach that I worked with in Australia, Geraldine Cook. I hadn't done theater since 2016, and needed to get my instrument back into shape and to get the athleticism going for this particular show, with so many different characters and talking for two hours straight, yelling and speaking quietly and all of that. And she was really instrumental in being able to switch them on quickly, and to also know that I have something to go back on when, in the 10th week, you're like, 'My voice is shot. What am I going to do?' NICOLE SCHERZINGER It's not necessarily a person for me, it's a higher power, because it's so much bigger than me — as we all know, it is a lot. So I'd have to say a higher power, and my ancestors. Cole, you'd been thinking about doing something about Mary Todd Lincoln for 15 years. Why her? ESCOLA I had the idea, 'What if Abraham Lincoln's assassination was a good thing for Mary Todd?' [laughs] But it's really a story about someone with a dream that everyone around her thinks is stupid — and that's how I felt about this idea, so it's very meta. It's Mary's story, and then it's my story with the show— SCHERZINGER And Norma's story. ESCOLA And Rose's story. My deep fear is that I'm irredeemably annoying. So I thought, 'Can you root for someone who's completely annoying, with no redeeming qualities? Can you have the audience on her side by the end, even though she's just id the whole time? That was my hope.' Audra, at the age of 10, you were part of a production of at a dinner theater in Fresno? MCDONALD Yes, I was one of Uncle's Jocko's buddies. [laughs] Over the years since, was it even an aspiration of yours to be a part of a Broadway production of it? Where did the idea come from? MCDONALD Gavin Creel [the Tony-winning actor who died of cancer last year just 48], who was a wondrous friend to many of us here. He brought Sara Bareilles to Thanksgiving dinner at our house, and my older daughter was obsessed with Sara, so at one point Gavin said to her, 'Why don't you go talk to her?' And then, as I was nursing my younger daughter upstairs, I heard Sara at the piano and my older daughter, who plays the bass, playing 'Who Made You King of Anything?' I ran downstairs to take pictures, and then Gavin said, 'Oh, honey, I want to talk to you about something! Come here!' And he dragged me into the garage and told me his idea that I should play Rose in Gypsy. SCHERZINGER Wow, that's an amazing story! MCDONALD So it's a tribute to Gavin. He's the one who put it in my head. Jonathan, you portray Bobby Darin from around 19 to 31, and he died at 37. Your association with this project goes back to 2018? GROFF Eight years ago, [producer] Ted Chapin asked me to do a night of Bobby Darin music at the 92nd Street Y. Sort of like you, Cole, part of my inspiration is watching clips of divas singing, so I went home and watched Bobby Darin performing on YouTube, and I had this reaction that I normally feel when I watch Barbra [Streisand] or Judy [Garland] or Beyoncé — it's usually reserved for a female performer, but he was singing for his life. Then I started learning about him, that he was told that he was going to die by the time he was 16, so from 16 to 37 was all borrowed time for him, and is reflected in the primal way that he's leaping, in these black and white clips, off of my computer screen. I read this quote that, 'At the end of the day, he was a nightclub animal,' which is now a line at the end of our show. So at the Y, we started doing his music live, which was really fun, but then all of a sudden, in the space between audience and performer, it felt spiritual. For the last seven and a half years, we've been trying to make it happen [on Broadway]. And now we're at Circle in the Square, finally getting to do it for an audience, and it's like drugs. It's great. Nicole, the world first got to know you through the Pussycat Dolls — you ladies were together from 2003 through 2010 — but from what I understand, your interest in and involvement with theater predated that, and you've been on a quest to get back to it. In fact, I was invited to something at the Pendry Hotel in LA in 2022, and I wasn't sure what was behind it, but I was thrilled to get to see you— SCHERZINGER You went?! Yes. This was an intimate performance that you gave, which sort of connects to , right? SCHERZINGER I got my first job when I was about 14 at the Actors Theatre of Louisville in Louisville, Kentucky — which, for Louisville, Kentucky, is big time, y'all — and I was in a youth performing arts high school. That's where I found my tribe. I always felt, since I was a little girl, that I didn't really fit in and didn't really feel comfortable in my skin, but then I went to this performing arts school and I was like, 'Oh my gosh, these humans are just like me!' I started out in voice and learned to read music and sang in the choir; and then I went to musical theater. Ms. Mateus cast me in Alice when I was 15— ESCOLA Alice in Wonderland? SCHERZINGER Alice in Wonderland. ESCOLA Okay. It could have been Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. [laughs] SCHERZINGER And that was big-time for me because back then people didn't cast roles like that. I was like, 'Yo, you're casting a Hawaiian-Ukrainian-Filipina girl as Alice?!' So, that's where my love affair began with musical theater. I went on to college and to do a lot more musical theater — summer stock in many different places around the country — so yes, this is over 30 years in the making. In the Dolls we have a song called 'When I Grow Up [I Want to Be Famous],' and we were shooting that music video on Hollywood Blvd. in front of the Pantages, and there's actually a video where I go, 'I always thought I'd end up on that side of the street,' and it pans to the Pantages with Wicked. I was fortunate enough to do Rent at the Hollywood Bowl 10 years ago. Neil Patrick Harris directed it and it had a beautiful cast— CRISS I saw that! It was fantastic. You smoked that. SCHERZINGER Around 2017 or 2018, I was like, 'Can I please audition for things?' And people wouldn't even allow me to audition. So I created my own show and put it on in London, New York at the Django, and then in LA [at the Pendry]. I was like, 'I'm just going to go put it on myself and invite people to come.' It was all the roles that I wanted to be cast in and all the songs that I wanted to sing. And that's what you saw. You obviously achieved your objective, because Andrew Lloyd Webber and Jamie Lloyd approached you about — and I know you sort of thought at the time, 'Is it a great compliment or insult to be asked to play Norma Desmond?' But I think the ultimate compliment came after Andrew Lloyd Webber later said that your performance is the best thing that he's ever seen in anything that he's been a part of, which is high praise. ESCOLA He didn't see me in Cats. [laughs] Darren, is an original musical. How did it get on your radar and how did you wind up bringing it to Broadway? CRISS I think all the best stories that we weren't really prepared to hear — Batman or Star Wars are examples. If you were trying to elevator-pitch any of them, people would be like, 'What the fuck are you talking about? That's the dumbest idea I've ever heard.' So it is fun to be part of something so singular. I was telling Audra that I name-drop her every night when people come by to say hello. I say, 'I don't envy the Herculean task that Audra has. First, it's over three hours of ripping your soul out vocally, emotionally, all these things. But because it's such a known piece, people also come in with comparisons and expectations, which isn't fair to her— MCDONALD And singing along! [laughs] CRISS Because I've done shows like Little Shop [of Horrors, Off Broadway] and Hedwig [and the Angry Inch, on Broadway] where people know the material, that can also be an obstacle and something that you have to overcome, for better or for worse. For me, I've never been a part of anything where audience has been completely unencumbered by expectation or experience. That in itself is an obstacle, because now I have to try and convince them that this is something somewhat worthwhile, but it is amazing to feel that the gasp of, 'What is going on?!' But in short, this came to me in 2018, and it was just a matter of being available — the pandemic and then a strike and so many things that happened until finally the stars aligned in a way that I'm so grateful for. Sarah, was never done for the stage until 2020, when it was first performed in Australia. How did you wind up attached to it? SNOOK Kip [Williams, the playwright] and I had a conversation about it around March of 2023. I was about to go and shoot the final scenes in Barbados for season four of Succession. I went, 'This is an amazing thing that's about to end, and this is something else that I could go on to.' The question, first of all, was, 'What's the earliest you think you could do this? We have a theater we're looking at in August.' [laughs] I was like, 'I have a baby I'm currently cooking. She's due in April. So there's no way I can make August work. The earliest I could do it is this time next year.' And so they accommodated that. You're used to having to perform a lot of lines very quickly, between Sorkin's with and , among other things, but doing so while also literally running from one character into another, as you do in , is different. SNOOK It's different. And it's prose that has been turned into dialogue and that has to be spoken in a way that the audience can receive it, to understand it, to be engaged with it — finding places to be incredibly swift with it, because we need to be moving on and get the audience leaning forward, and then also to allow them to sort of sit back for a second and enjoy the pretty pictures. And I think, ironically, that having a baby and doing this show was maybe a good choice because it means that you stay very straight and narrow. You're not going out after the show to have a drink or wind down. It's like, 'No, I've got to go breastfeed in two hours, so I'm going to try to get another hour-and-a-half of sleep now, wake up and feed, and then go back to sleep.' Louis, you're only 21. What was going on in your life when you first heard about ? Were you already a watcher of ? MCCARTNEY I was just moving out of Dublin. My dad and I were doing our little YouTube channel, which is how they [the show's producers] got wind of me, and how my agent got wind of me me as well. I was finishing up season three of Hope Street, which was the soap I did. And then I got wind of this 'untitled Netflix play directed by Stephen Daldry,' and I did three to four months of auditions, and was flying back to Belfast, and finally we got word that it was Henry Creel, so all my focus then turned on Jamie Campbell Bower [who played the character on the TV show] and his performance in season four. I think he's phenomenal — I wanted to emulate that, but also create my own line of Henry Creel because he's a kid in the show, and we're dealing with this idea, 'What if he's a good boy? What if he just wants to go to school and get a girlfriend?' At the start of the process, I judged him and thought that he was a bad kid, but now I think he's a really good kid and it's his conditioning and the people around him that shaped him. But that's the question of our play. It's quite a psychological Greek take on Stranger Things. You've got the mother archetype and you have the tragic hero, very Hamlet, and there's lots of questions to the stars, 'Why me and why am I like this?' But also keeping with the mythology of Stranger Things and honoring the fans. It has now been 10 years since the opening on Broadway of a little show called , which Mr. Groff here helped to bring to life. Jonathan, 10 years later, what do you believe is the greatest legacy of ? GROFF That Lin-Manuel Miranda is a fucking genius and wrote an unparalleled work of art. I replaced Brian d'Arcy James in the show Off Broadway at the Public Theater. He originated the role of the King, so I got this really interesting experience with the show because I always felt outside of it and inside of it at the same time. Lin and I became friends when I was doing Spring Awakening and he was doing In The Heights, and we had stayed in touch, and then Brian had to leave and Lin texted me, 'What are you doing next month? Can you come be in the show that I wrote for a couple months Off Broadway?' I was like, 'Sure.' I went on a Friday and was in the show on Tuesday. When I saw it, I was like, 'Oh my God!' I mean, we all had that experience seeing it. The King is only on stage for nine minutes; when we moved to Broadway to the Richard Rodgers, I would peek through the curtain, watching the show. Lin is such a brilliant performer, he has such an awareness of storytelling and audience, and he knew how to keep everyone's attention for two-and-a-half, three hours. Even when I'm listening to the mashup that we're doing on the Tonys I'm like, 'Oh my God, Hamilton is so good!' Now it's been around for a decade and you're like, 'Oh, yeah, it's Hamilton' — it's the poster and it's 'send all your friends to see it' and whatever. But every time I re-engage with the material, it's just pure genius. Audra, yours is the sixth Broadway incarnation of , and you are the first person of color to play Rose. You've been navigating this conversation your whole life, or at least since you were 16 and playing Eva Perón in . Also, you received your first Tony nomination for , for a part that had been played by white people. Can you take us into your experience with nontraditional casting? MCDONALD I was very lucky growing up in Fresno, California, and having two parents who needed something for their very hyperactive, over-emotional, over-dramatic child who was struggling deeply. They found this dinner theater for me, and I went and auditioned and became a part of the little junior troupe. And once I was a part of that troupe, like when all of us kind of find theater, it was, 'Oh, here I am!' ESCOLA 'Bye, everyone!' MCDONALD 'I know who I am now.' Or, 'I know that there are a lot of people like me,' whether we know who we are or not. But in that theater in Fresno, I at one point was cast to play the Servant Girl in The Miracle Worker — I just ran out and auditioned for it and got the part — and my parents said, 'Absolutely not. You will not be playing that part. We don't need to have you out there perpetuating stereotypes. There are other roles for you.' From then on, it was, 'What role do you think you can play? And make them say no to you.' So when the call came to audition for Carousel, I think that helped me. I'm trying to find who a person is, not what they look like; that's a part of it, but, 'Who are they? And is there something in my soul that can help illuminate who that character is?' And that's what I feel about what's happened with Rose. The main thing with me playing Rose as a Black woman is we are not shrinking away from it. We have not changed a single line. We have not changed any of the grammar. A lot of people come to this show and say, 'Oh, well Rose is saying 'that ain't this' and 'that ain't that' — I'm like, 'That's what Arthur Laurents wrote!' I felt I just knew who she was, and why couldn't it be a Black woman's story? Why couldn't it be an Asian woman's story? It could be anybody's story! Cole, you're a bit of a trailblazer yourself. Over the last few years, there have been a couple of non-binary performers who have been recognized, but not many. Some award shows have adopted gender-neutral awards. That is not the case obviously at the Tonys, so you had to weigh in on which of the existing categories you wanted to be eligible for, and selected best actor in a play. But how did you feel about having to make that call? And is that something that you hope changes? ESCOLA I do hope it changes, yeah. I didn't love having to make that choice. There are arguments, 'Well, women are given so little, and that would take more away from them,' but at the Drama Desks last year, best performer went to Sarah Paulson and Jessica Lange; no men won, and I think the same thing happened in the supporting category. So I don't know, it's such a weird thing, it's almost arbitrary — 'Well, a man couldn't play this same role that a woman can play.' Well, an eighty-year-old couldn't play Juliet — well, I shouldn't say that. An eighty-year-old could play Juliet. But where the lines are drawn, I guess, doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Best director is gender-neutral. Every other category is. ESCOLA Every other category. MCDONALD It makes for a shorter night. [laughs] ESCOLA It makes for a shorter night. I don't know. I just want to do my show and be myself, and I don't want to push people's buttons — well, that's not true. [laughs] I do want to push people's buttons, but not those buttons. Another topic of conversation in the community is the role that technology is playing. Sarah and Nicole have camera rigs on stage with large screens that give us a look into things that people never would've been able to see on Broadway until a few years ago. Louis, some of the effects in your show are unbelievable, and probably wouldn't have been possible pre-, the effects of which were handled by some of the same people who worked on your show and are getting a special Tony for them. In the case of the three of your shows, the technology helps to connect the stories to the world of today, especially for younger audiences, wouldn't you say? SNOOK Yeah, absolutely. Technology is always going to advance — we invent things and we find ways to incorporate them into our lives. And we've always had theater — it's an ancient art form. So inevitably you're going to incorporate technological advancements into theater in some ways. And as long as it has a dramaturgical purpose and an active influence on the audience, I think there's a place for it. This show wouldn't be possible without the camerawork that the camerapeople do, and also the video they record, edits that we've created beforehand. And it's amazing to work inside of that. Nicole, how did you acclimate to acting while there are people with cameras running around you? SCHERZINGER I guess I'm kind of used to cameras with singing, but I didn't have a choice. It makes sense, obviously, because Norma is a film star, that he incorporated that. And we don't have a set or props or anything, so we're able to tell that story on stage and then to be a little bit more intimate when the camera is involved. But yeah, as pop star, this [points to the left side of her face] is my good side. I'm sitting on my bad side [points to the right side of her face] today. [laughs] So I've had to throw all that down the drain. He [director Jamie Lloyd] has taken me out of my comfort zone, but it's what's got me here today. It's supposed to emanate from within, anyway. We've established that unbelievable physicality is demanded of each of you in these roles. Audra, you've said that you've never played a more exhausting part. Darren, I don't know how you don't need a chiropractor walking around with you all day. SCHERZINGER I have several good ones. CRISS I've got to ask Nicole. What do you do for yourself physically between performances? CRISS I'm really militant about contrast therapy. It's this ancient Norwegian stuff. It's being in a hot bath and a cold plunge. I'll do a sauna and a steam. I do this two, three times a week for about a half hour. MCDONALD Do you have a sauna in your dressing room?! SCHERZINGER And a cold plunge?! CRISS I do not. I wish I did. I'll go to a place that has a sauna. I'll do a steam room for 15 minutes, a cold plunge for three minutes, and a sauna for 15. I'll do it in-between shows. It's a meditative thing. It's good for my respiratory system, circulatory system and immune system, and that is how I keep my battery charged. It's a reset. It's my time to just relax. I feel I'm on a beach. I close my eyes and just drown out the world. MCDONALD I would never come for the second show. [laughs] CRISS Well, it's that cold plunge at the very end, sitting in 45-degree water for three minutes. After that I'm like, 'All right, let's go, we've got another one!' SNOOK I just sleep. I think it's so important. I mean, for me, I need eight hours. ESCOLA Between shows? [laughs] SNOOK You've got to have the deep-sleep recovery because it heals your body. SCHERZINGER That's how I feel too. I have to tell myself, 'It's a new day, it's a new performance.' ESCOLA It's reminding me of that Ethel Merman quote: 'Warm up? That's what the opening number's for!' [laughs] I can't rest between shows because then I wouldn't get up. MCDONALD I can't either. Other shows I've been able to, but I can't sleep in between this one. Our show is basically three hours, so especially on a Wednesday matinee, we've got a 2pm and a 7:30pm, so I only have enough time to do PT and then sit down for a few minutes and stare at a wall. ESCOLA Yeah, exactly. The wall stare. You all move back and forth between screen and stage work. When you go from one to the other, what is the thing that you most consciously have to remind yourself to do differently? ESCOLA I don't [do things differently], and that's why I always get told on [a film or TV] set, 'Just less.' [laughs] MCDONALD 'Think louder.' I used to be so afraid of the camera. Once I figured out that the camera is the audience, I realized that I could think louder and the camera will pick it up. ESCOLA Oh, I've got to write that down. SCHERZINGER I'm taking that. Speaking of moving back and forth between the stage and screen, some people will discover you through one and not even know that you do the other. Darren, you told me a funny story about this earlier today. CRISS There's no prerequisite for you to know anything about a person's career. I'll never forget, I saw this queen [McDonald] a long time ago at one of her shows in Los Angeles, and there was a woman next to me who loved Private Practice [the ABC TV series on which McDonald appeared from 2007 through 2011]. We were just small-talking before you went on, and I mentioned Ragtime and all these shows that I've loved your performances in. And she says, 'I didn't know she was a singer.' And I'm like, 'You best buckle up, you're about to get served some serious fucking shit!' [laughs] I just was so moved by that because, again, there's no prerequisite here. Her gateway drug was Private Practice. We take all kinds. We're happy to have you! MCDONALD No, it's true. People who don't usually come to see theater, but come for some reason — 'Well, I love Nicole from the Pussycat Dolls, so I'm coming to see her' or 'I love Sarah from Succession' or whatever — what usually happens is they get bit by the theater bug. They get a taste, and then they want more. Let's close with some fun rapid-fire stuff. Excluding relatives, who's the person whose attendance at one of your performances of your current show has meant the most to you? ESCOLA Elaine May. GROFF Tom Hanks. MCCARTNEY Tom Hanks as well. SNOOK Bette Midler. CRISS Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber. SCHERZINGER Glenn Close or Oprah. What's the most unusual thing in your dressing room? ESCOLA Me. [laughs] MCCARTNEY Dried lavender that I have yet to buy a vase for. SNOOK I've got a little crochet doll of the characters of Dorian and Jane from Predestination [a 2014 film in which she starred] and my Met Gala outfit, which this incredibly talented young woman crocheted. I love them, and so does my daughter — she loves to play with them. What's the most annoying thing that audience members are doing at Broadway shows in 2025? SNOOK I don't get particularly annoyed by it because I know the impulse, but I do just want to make a PSA that we can see your phones when they're up. It's a reflective surface reflecting back onto the stage. I can see you filming. [laughs] MCDONALD We can't do anything about phones. It is what it is. But at curtain call, it's almost like no one's applauding anymore because they're all filming! It's the weirdest thing to me. 'Well, then we'll just go.' SCHERZINGER Because they're trying to catch that legacy, honey! They got to get it. [laughs] Also, we can hear you eating. Sometimes with the rustling, I'm like, 'Did you get it? Did you?' Last one. If you could snap your fingers and make it so, what would be the ideal number of performances you would perform per week? SCHERZINGER That is a great question. MCDONALD That is a really good question. CRISS Do you get to decide when they are? Absolutely. MCDONALD Wednesday matinée is gone. SNOOK Yeah, I think seven is good. MCCARTNEY We do a double-double — two on Saturday and two on Sunday — so we don't have a Wednesday matinée. SNOOK The Sunday matinée is not something that exists in London, but it's fantastic. SCHERZINGER Delightful. SNOOK Because then you get a spare night! SCHERZINGER Six would be lush. You could just do it forever then. A version of this story appeared in the June 4 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe. Best of The Hollywood Reporter Hollywood's Most Notable Deaths of 2025 Harvey Weinstein's "Jane Doe 1" Victim Reveals Identity: "I'm Tired of Hiding" 'Awards Chatter' Podcast: 'Sopranos' Creator David Chase Finally Reveals What Happened to Tony (Exclusive)
