-Next on "Great Performances,"
how did a musical based on the life
of an overlooked founding father
become the hottest ticket in town?
♪ The ship is in the harbor now ♪
♪ See if you can spot him ♪
-Find out as composer Lin-Manuel Miranda
takes us on his personal journey
from original inspiration to Broadway sensation.
-I grabbed a biography off the shelf of Alexander Hamilton,
and I found it deeply moving
and deeply personal when I read it.
-♪ I'm the damn fool that shot him ♪
-Something that really sort of spoke to me
when I was, you know, reading this story
and beginning to research and write it
is that moment when you trade away capital
in exchange for the debt plan.
We call it "The Room Where It Happens."
-♪ I've got to be ♪ -♪ The room where it happens ♪
-♪ Oh, I've got to be in ♪ -♪ The room where it happens ♪
♪ I got to be, I got to be ♪
-Be in the room where it happens
when history steps off the page
and onto the stage in "Hamilton's America,"
next.
[ Indistinct conversations ]
[ Orchestra tuning ]
[ Up-tempo music plays ]
-We're on Broadway.
We're at the Richard Rodgers Theatre.
But at the same time,
it feels exactly the same as when I was
in "Pirates of Penzance" in ninth grade.
It's such a kick to get to play dress-up
and sing songs for an audience.
I know there are certain actors who are like,
"Once I get the wig, once I get the shoes,
I know who the character is."
I don't know that I'm like that. I do know
that my posture certainly changes
when I'm in the clothes,
but it really doesn't start for me
until I see everybody else in their costume.
And you get that moment of community
where we're all agreeing
to just create this world for people.
There's the part of my brain that works really hard
on making "Hamilton" historically accurate
and exciting and high-stakes.
And then there's the charge and the adrenaline
that comes from performing something
and hearing a response.
-Places, please.
All cast to places.
-Uh. Oops. I'm still married.
Thank you.
-Mr. President. -Oh, hey, man.
-♪ In New York, you can be a new man ♪
-♪ Just you wait ♪
-♪ In New York, you can be a new man ♪
-♪ Just you wait ♪
-♪ In New York, you can be a new man ♪
-♪ In New York ♪ -♪ New York ♪
-♪ Just you wait ♪
-♪ Alexander Hamilton ♪ -♪ Alexander Hamilton ♪
-♪ We are waiting in the wings for you ♪
-♪ Waiting in the wings for you ♪
-♪ You could never back down ♪
-♪ You never learned to take your time ♪
♪ Oh, Alexander Hamilton ♪ -♪ Alexander Hamilton ♪
-♪ When America sings for you ♪
-♪ Will they know what you overcame? ♪
♪ Will they know you rewrote the game? ♪
♪ The world will never be the same ♪
-♪ Oh-oh oh ♪
-♪ The ship is in the harbor now ♪
♪ See if you can spot him ♪ -♪ Just you wait ♪
-♪ Another immigrant coming up from the bottom ♪
-♪ Just you wait ♪
-♪ His enemies destroyed his rep ♪
♪ America forgot him ♪
-♪ We fought with him ♪
-♪ Me? I died for him ♪
-♪ Me? I trusted him ♪
-♪ Me? I loved him ♪
-♪ And me? ♪
♪ I'm the damn fool that shot him ♪
-[ Echoing ] ♪ Shot him ♪
-♪ There's a million things I haven't done ♪
♪ But just you wait ♪
-♪ What's your name, man? ♪
-♪ Alexander Hamilton ♪
[ Final chord plays ]
[ Door unlocking ]
-Ta-da! [ Laughs ]
Everything in my life is under construction.
My wife, Vanessa, and I bought this place last year.
We've been working on it almost a year.
There's a piano under here, believe it or not.
[ Piano plays off-key ]
I'm in this crazy holding pattern right now.
I'm just waiting for the next chapter of my life to start.
There's a kid coming in November.
Two weeks after the kid is born,
we start rehearsals for "Hamilton."
And then that becomes whatever it becomes.
And, um -- And I'm just sort of --
This is like the --
This is the part of the roller coaster
where we're just going up.
[ Piano plays off-key ]
That's one note I'm playing, and it's a full chord.
[ Piano plays off-key ]
So there will be some tuning.
[ Piano plays off-key ]
We're in the heart of Washington Heights.
It literally looks like the set of "In the Heights"
when you look out the window.
I can't get away from my shows.
[ Orchestra plays up-tempo Latin music ]
My first Broadway show was "In the Heights."
It's about three days in the life of a block
in Washington Heights, New York, where I grew up.
Won some awards,
and it was pretty much a dream come true.
[ Music ends ]
[ Cheers and applause ]
The idea for "Hamilton" came to me totally by surprise
while I was on vacation at "In the Heights."
-I grabbed a biography off the shelf
of Alexander Hamilton
'cause I wanted a big, fat book to read on vacation,
and I found it deeply moving and deeply personal
when I read it.
It was just such a compelling ride.
-Lin invited me to "In the Heights."
And I went backstage, and he said,
"Ron, I was reading the book,
and hip-hop songs started rising off the page."
And I said to him, "Really?"
-I said, "This is Tupac.
This is Biggie. This is a hip-hop story.
This is my next show."
So, who was Alexander Hamilton,
besides being the dude on the $10,
the best-looking founding father?
He was George Washington's chief of staff
during the Revolutionary War,
and he was our first treasury secretary.
But before that, he was an immigrant.
He was born in the Caribbean.
But he came to our country
and, by sheer force of will and intellect,
changed our country forever.
-I don't even really know
if I knew who Alexander Hamilton was.
I knew was on a -- he was on our currency.
-Alexander Hamilton is one
of the unsung heroes of our country.
-Yeah, well, that's the way history works.
Sometimes it takes a while for people to give you credit.
-Hamilton saw the opportunity
when an -- an immigrant could come to this country,
get a little education, have some great ideas,
work hard, and build something.
Pretty amazing guy.
-Hamilton was born on the island of Nevis.
Nevis is a very beautiful and colorful volcanic island
in the Caribbean.
But the day-to-day reality was very brutal and violent,
like most of the Caribbean islands at that time.
It was dominated by sugar and cotton plantations.
-Most people in America
think of the slave trade as Africa to North America,
but most of them went to the Caribbean.
And so Hamilton was right in the middle
of this huge, huge market.
Even people who were not terribly well-to-do
could have one or two slaves in Nevis.
And his family did. -Hamilton's mother, Rachel,
had just fled an unhappy marriage
when she met his father, James Hamilton.
But under the terms of her divorce,
she wasn't able to remarry,
which meant that Hamilton and his brother had to grow up
with the stigma of illegitimacy,
which was very real in those days.
And so Hamilton goes through some really rough...
between birth and getting out of the island.
-When Hamilton was 11,
James Hamilton abandoned Rachel
and the two sons on the island of Saint Croix.
Not long afterwards, Rachel contracted a lethal fever,
which she then communicated to Alexander.
-♪ In the eye of a hurricane ♪
♪ There is quiet for just a moment ♪
♪ A yellow sky ♪
♪ I was 12 when my mother died ♪
♪ She was holding me ♪
♪ We were sick, and she was holding me ♪
♪ I couldn't seem to die ♪
-Hamilton suddenly found himself,
at the age of 13,
an illegitimate orphan in poverty,
and so he immediately had to go to work.
-He worked for a trading charter as a kid,
so he's getting firsthand economic education
because the people who actually own it
are off on ships, trading.
And he's in charge of the books back home.
-♪ When I was 17, a hurricane destroyed my town ♪
♪ I didn't drown ♪
♪ I couldn't seem to die ♪
-A hurricane destroys Saint Croix.
He writes a letter about the destruction he saw,
and it's so beautifully written that a newspaper publishes it.
-It was impressive enough and eloquent enough
that people got together a charitable fund
to send him to North America, to the North American colonies,
so he could get a real education.
-And that's how he gets off the island.
He literally writes his way out of his circumstances.
And it's so much the quintessential immigrant story
of redefining yourself
when you come to a new place.
And the sense I got, really early
in Ron Chernow's Hamilton biography,
was this sense of, "I know this guy."
The fact that Hamilton left the Caribbean
to come to New York to get his education --
I always tell people, "I'm just playing my dad in the show..."
-[ Laughs ] -...down to the hair.
Tell me about coming to New York for the first time.
What brought you here?
-I got a great opportunity to come and study at NYU.
I left Puerto Rico when I was 18.
I always thought, "Puerto Rico is just too small.
I-I got to see more."
I graduated. Then I was involved in advocacy,
but I realized that I wanted to do something different,
so I joined the Ed Koch administration,
mayor of New York City, in '87.
You know, in my experience,
immigrants are never the lazy ones.
They're not the stupid ones.
They're the smart, hard workers
'cause they have to work so much harder
to make sense of their reality
and succeed in that reality.
I always saw my time here as a temporary thing.
But then I realized
that this is where I was gonna raise my children.
Then we stay here forever.
-"Bye, Puerto Rico." And that was it.
And then you were a New Yorker.
-Alexander Hamilton is in New York
just at the time as the tremendous ferment
of the American Revolution is starting.
On the Common, what is today City Hall Park,
Alexander Hamilton is delivering fiery speeches.
He also had established his bona fides
as one of the most feared polemical writers in New York.
-I really keyed into how much of a New York story it was.
These blocks that I've passed all my life
have all along been these incredible sources
of rich American history.
I don't think a lot of people know that.
When we think of the founding fathers,
we think of them in some room in Philadelphia,
you know, hashing it out.
It's like a John Trumbull painting.
But they were here. They were uptown,
like the Grange in Hamilton Heights
on 141st Street,
which is where Hamilton and his wife
lived for the last few years of his life.
-This was Hamilton's study, and --
-It's the right color. -Right. [ Laughs ] Money green.
This is a reproduction of Hamilton's laptop,
or his traveling desk.
He would write everywhere and anywhere.
He wrote under trees. He wrote on --
on horseback. He wrote in carriages.
-I mean, the tonnage of his writing, it's --
-Exactly. The sheer amount that he had,
he must have had something with him all the time
to be writing on
because he never would have produced the amount that he did.
-Yeah.
Oh, my goodness.
All right. Can I touch the desk?
-No. -No.
Okay. I won't. That's cool.
This just makes me feel like I have to go home and write.
[ Both laugh ]
♪♪
I started writing that first song
that's just about his childhood.
I wanted to sort of encapsulate that
in two hip-hop verses.
-The strongest candidate
is the candidate who wins the most elections.
Barack Obama has won 29 contests.
Hillary Clinton has won 13 contests.
-And I worked on it for about a year at "In the Heights,"
while I'm still doing eight shows a week.
-Lin didn't say, "I was writing a show."
Lin said, "I'm writing a song."
So, he said, "I read this book,
and I think there's something there.
I think I might do a series of songs."
And I said, "Great. Go. Write."
[ Applause ] -I'd only written this one song
when the White House called and said,
"We're doing an evening of spoken word,
but if you have anything on the American experience,
that would be great."
I said, "I got a hot 16 about Hamilton."
[ Piano plays up-tempo music ]
♪ How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman ♪
♪ Dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot ♪
♪ In the Caribbean by providence ♪
♪ Impoverished, in squalor ♪
♪ Grow up to be a hero and a scholar? ♪
-The first day Lin
brought the opening number of the show to me,
I'm like, "It's about history, but it's rap?
Uh, okay. Is it serious?
Sure. Whatever."
I remember, it wasn't till I actually heard it
all the way through, I'm like, "Wow, this is real."
-♪ There would've been nothin' left to do ♪
♪ For someone less astute ♪
♪ He would've been dead or destitute ♪
♪ Without a cent of restitution ♪
♪ Started workin', clerkin' for his late mother's landlord ♪
♪ Tradin' sugar cane and rum ♪
♪ and other things he can't afford ♪
♪ Scammin' for... ♪
When they posted videos of the evening,
my performance went viral,
and we were sort of off to the races after that.
We realized, "There's a show here."
♪ I'm the damn genius that shot him ♪
[ Final chord plays ]
[ Cheers and applause ]
So, I started writing songs
at the amazing pace of a song a year.
After two years of working, I had two songs to show for it.
-"So, you've written two songs in two and a half years.
We're gonna be very old by the time
this is actually gonna be complete,
so why don't we expedite it a little bit?"
-And so, you know, I'm writing as fast as I can.
But that's how it gets done.
You know, you set these deadlines, and you meet them.
-I have more than once compared Lin to Shakespeare,
and I do it without blushing or apologizing.
Lin, in "Hamilton," is doing exactly
what Shakespeare did in his history plays.
He's taking the voice of the common people,
elevating it to poetry --
in Shakespeare's case, iambic pentameter,
in Lin's case, rap, rhyme, hip-hop, R&B --
and by elevating it to poetry, ennobling the people themselves.
He is bringing out what is noble about the common tongue.
And that is something that nobody has done
as effectively as Lin since Shakespeare.
Yeah, I said it.
-♪ ...handle our financial situation ♪
♪ Are we a nation of states? ♪
♪ What's the state of our nation? ♪
♪ I'm past patiently waitin' ♪
♪ I'm passionately smashin' every expectation ♪
♪ Every action's an act of creation ♪
♪ I'm laughin' in the face of casualties and sorrow ♪
♪ For the first time, I'm thinkin' past tomorrow ♪
♪ And I am not throwin' away my shot ♪
♪ I am not throwin' away my shot ♪
♪ Hey, yo, I'm just like... ♪
I write everywhere. I write on trains.
I write -- I write wherever I can.
And sometimes, a couple of days,
I've written in Aaron Burr's bedroom.
It's pretty amazing to be in the space
where he was in the later part of his life.
Talk about artist in residence -- literally.
This is my "Hamilton" writing desk.
I sit here. I sit on the floor.
I don't sit on the Colonial furniture.
♪ You keep shootin' off at the mouth ♪
[ Chuckles ]
There's a song in the show called "My Shot,"
and it's Hamilton's big sort of "I want" song.
It's the second song in the show.
We see him make his group of friends --
the Marquis de Lafayette, John Laurens,
Hercules Mulligan, and Aaron Burr,
who is a colleague and a friend.
And I'm sort of putting him into the song --
'cause these are guys who are oil and water,
but they come up together.
They're revolutionaries together.
They're soldiers together. They're lawyers together.
They're elected officials together.
And at some point, one shoots the other.
-Yeah, I-I come out in the first three minutes of the show,
and I say, "I'm the damn fool that shot him."
And so what that tells me as an actor is that,
that is not a secret that we're keeping.
That's not a piece of the puzzle
that we are hiding behind our back.
So, then what it's about is about --
it's about the fracture.
It's about watching where exactly the moment is
that it all changes.
-Whereas Alexander Hamilton
was an illegitimate orphan kid from the Caribbean
who was born into shame and misery,
Aaron Burr was really born into American aristocracy.
It looks like he's going to have this very luxurious life.
By the time Aaron Burr is 2 years old,
his mother's died, his father's died.
He's farmed out to relatives who bring him up.
He then goes to Princeton college,
graduates by the time he was 16,
so that Burr was as much of a prodigy as Hamilton was.
And so it's the first of many strange parallels
in the lives of Alexander Hamilton
and Aaron Burr.
-A lot of the revising process
is continuing to check in on that relationship.
It is the most important relationship in the show.
So, right now, I'm working on lyrics,
working Burr into the second song in the show.
[ Singing indistinctly ]
There's a section where they're doing shots
and saying what they would do with their shot.
So, Lafayette, whose command of English
is not so great, goes...
♪ With my shot, I dream of life without monarchy ♪
♪ The something stress in France ♪
♪ will lead to "onarchy" ♪
-"Onarchy?" How you say? Oh, "anarchy."
♪ When I fight, I make the other side panicky with my ♪
♪ Shot ♪ -♪ Shot ♪
-And then Hercules Mulligan, who was a tailor's apprentice,
says... ♪ My shot ♪
♪ Yo, I'm a tailor's apprentice ♪
♪ And I got y'all knuckleheads ♪
♪ In loco parentis ♪
-♪ I'm joining the rebellion ♪
♪ 'Cause I know it's my chance to socially advance ♪
♪ Instead of sewin' some pants ♪
♪ I'm gonna take a ♪
♪ Shot ♪ -♪ Shot ♪
-And then Laurens, who is a fierce abolitionist, goes...
♪ But we'll never be truly free ♪
♪ Until those in bondage
♪ Have the same rights as you and me ♪
-♪ You and I, do or die ♪
♪ Wait till I sally in on a stallion ♪
♪ With the first black battalion ♪
♪ Have another ♪
♪ Shot ♪ -♪ Shot ♪
-And so now I'm working on Burr
sort of jumping in on this, going...
♪ Geniuses, lower your voices ♪
♪ If you keep out of trouble, then you double your choices ♪
♪ Shooting off at the mouth, shooting from the hip ♪
♪ Shooting the...♪
Or, "Something, shooty, shooty, shooty, shooty,
shooty, shooty, shot."
I haven't figured out how it works yet.
-♪ Geniuses, lower your voices ♪
♪ You keep out of trouble, and you double your choices ♪
♪ I'm with you, but the situation is fraught ♪
♪ You've got to be carefully taught ♪
♪ If you talk, you're gonna get shot ♪
-And the Hamilton comes in
and, as was his genius, synthesizes it all.
-♪ Burr, check what we got ♪
♪ Mr. Lafayette, hard rock like Lancelot ♪
♪ I think your pants look hot ♪
♪ Laurens, I like you a lot, let's hatch a plot ♪
♪ Blacker than the kettle callin' the pot ♪
♪ What are the odds the gods would put us all in one spot? ♪
♪ Poppin' a squat on conventional wisdom ♪
♪ Like it or not ♪
♪ A bunch of revolutionary manumission abolitionists ♪
-♪ Give me a position ♪
♪ Show me where the ammunition is ♪
And then I want him to sort of stun his friends into silence.
-♪ Oh, am I talkin' too loud? ♪
♪ Sometimes I get overexcited, shoot off at the mouth ♪
♪ I never had a group of friends before ♪
♪ I promise that I'll make y'all proud ♪
-Little beat of silence, and Laurens goes,
"Let's get this guy in front of a crowd."
And then we go into the chorus.
-♪ And I'm not throwin' away my shot ♪
♪ I am not throwin' away my shot ♪
♪ Hey, yo, I'm just like my country ♪
♪ I'm young, scrappy, and hungry ♪
♪ And I'm not throwin' away my shot ♪
♪ We gonna rise up ♪ -♪ Not throwin' away my shot ♪
-♪ Time to take a shot ♪ ♪ We gonna rise up ♪
-♪ Not throwin' away my shot ♪ -♪ Time to take a shot ♪
-♪ We gonna rise up, rise up ♪ -♪ It's time to take a shot ♪
-♪ Rise up, rise up ♪ -♪ It's time to take a shot ♪
-♪ Rise up ♪ -♪ It's time to take a shot ♪
♪ Rise up ♪ ♪ It's time to take a shot ♪
-♪ Oh-oh, oh ♪ -♪ Take a shot, shot, shot ♪
♪ It's time to take a shot, time to take a shot ♪
♪ And I am not throwin' away my ♪
-♪ Not throwin' away my shot ♪
[ Final chord plays ]
-Hamilton didn't really meet Lafayette, Laurens,
and Mulligan all at once in the same bar,
but we're gonna meet them all at once because we got to go.
We've got a lot of story to tell,
and we want to get you out
before "Les Mis" gets out next door.
I'm a big fan of musicals
that attempt to wrestle history to the stage,
and everyone writing a musical about history
is standing in the shadow of Sondheim,
standing in the shadow of John Weidman.
Why do we go to history?
Why is real life more interesting than whole cloth?
-It's interesting because what happens is,
when you live through history, you don't know it's history,
you know? -Yeah.
-And you so you have to talk to John.
John's a historian.
I only write historical shows with John
because I love going to school and learning, but history --
I couldn't get into it, as we say.
And I think maybe John was the person
who got me interested in history very late in life.
-In all the shows that Steve and I have written together,
including "Assassins," you reach a point, I think,
where the research is over and you then invent the character
who actually existed in history and --
-But they're still partly defined by what they did.
That's the event.
-Absolutely, and that's what the audience
will bring into the theater with them,
so you have to be aware of that.
But they live in a kind of a penumbral area,
where they are who they were,
but they're also who you want them to be.
-Well, that leads me to a really good bit of advice
you gave me early when I was writing "Hamilton."
I was drowning in research. And what you told me was,
"Just write the parts you think are a musical."
And that forms its own spine.
-♪ You'll be back ♪
♪ Soon you'll see ♪
♪ You'll remember you belong to me ♪
♪ You'll be back ♪
♪ Time will tell ♪
♪ You'll remember that I served you well ♪
-King George just sort of showed up in my brain.
It doesn't make sense on paper
that he should be a character in this musical.
He's all the way across the ocean, far from the events.
He and Hamilton never met.
At the same time, to give him these moments
throughout the show
robs the American Revolution of its inevitability.
-Each piece of music is specific to an emotion and a character.
Even though it's about history, Lin has found a way
lyrically and musically to connect it to now.
And so having the King George psychology
be like a breakup song from Britain to America,
I feel like, makes it really relatable.
-♪ When you're gone, I'll go mad ♪
♪ So don't throw away this thing we had ♪
♪ 'Cause when push comes to shove ♪
♪ I will kill your friends and family ♪
♪ To remind you of my love ♪
-None of the shows we're talking about are documentaries.
None of them are book reports with songs added.
I mean, ultimately, they're artists' inventions.
-Yeah.
-I got into the history through the characters.
John got into the history that surrounded the characters,
and then we met there. He sparks me, and I spark him.
Or, as George Furth said,
"I collabor him, and he collabors me."
[ Laughter ]
[ Piano plays ]
-One, two, three.
♪ Ah, ah, ah ♪
And then to... "Raise a glass to freedom,"
maybe seven, "something they can never take away,"
and then go through the chorus and then go to Laurens --
♪ I may not live to see our glory ♪
-Right, and Laurens was the bringer of that.
Yeah. The Cabinet meetings
are really my favorite part of the process.
They are when I bring in a song to my collaborators --
let's say, "The Story of Tonight" --
and I go, "Here's what I've written."
And then we pull it apart.
I don't want to lose the... ♪ Duh-uh-uh uh uh ♪
-Okay, okay. -That's worth saving, to me.
-So, does that mean start it and not --
-Not starting. -Start it in the basement?
-♪ Glass to freedom ♪ -♪ Raise a glass to freedom ♪
♪ Something they can never take away ♪
I wear a lot of hats in "Hamilton."
I'm the music director.
I'm one of the arrangers with Lin-Manuel.
I am the orchestrator. I am the conductor.
I am the keyboard player. I take on all those duties
just because I feel like I have such a strong opinion
about how I think something should sound,
but also because I feel like I know what Lin is looking for.
I feel like I know how it is that I can execute his vision.
I don't think it's about tacking on another chorus
unless you think it just needs that.
-No, I don't think we need it. But I feel like Andy's
gonna have a million things to weigh in on.
-Choreography, to me, is the writing idea,
the lyric idea, the emotional idea,
that then is exaggerated into a heightened state,
and it becomes physicalized.
What's amazing about our team is,
we're finishing each other's sentences all the time.
What Lin writes and Alex arranges
works for me, choreographically.
And my ideas meet Tommy's sensibilities.
So, that's why our work can be seamless.
That's why it seems like one thing goes right into the next.
-Anything else with
the Hamilton-Washington back-and-forth?
You guys good? -I'm good.
-All right, moving on.
As a very mediocre American history major,
I was exposed to a lot of these kinds
of stories told in very different ways.
And what I wanted to try to do was remove
any of the black-and-white nostalgia, sepia tone,
and make this feel vital and vibrant.
-♪ Here comes the General ♪
-♪ Ladies and gentlemen ♪
-♪ Here comes the General ♪
-♪ The moment you've been waiting for ♪
-♪ Here comes the General ♪ -♪ The pride of Mount Vernon ♪
-♪ Here comes the General ♪ -♪ George Washington ♪
-♪ We are outgunned ♪ -♪ What? ♪
-♪ Outmanned ♪ -♪ What? ♪
-♪ Outnumbered, outplanned ♪
-♪ Buck, buck, buck, buck, buck ♪
♪ We got to make an all-out stand ♪
♪ A-yo, I'm gonna need a right-hand man ♪
-♪ Buck, buck, buck, buck, buck ♪
-We're meeting Washington
at the crux of the entire conflict.
Boston is over. He's just lost New York.
His army is as close to being annihilated
in that moment as you could imagine.
-To meet him that way suddenly takes us
out of the history books.
It takes us into the urgency of, "Oh, we might not win."
-Initially, when the war begins,
there's a lot of retreating on the part of Washington.
And what he's trying to do, really,
is just keep the war going.
-He's juggling how to get all of these soldiers out of harm's way
and away from all of the ships
that are still in New York Harbor.
He has no one to turn to. Up pops Hamilton.
[ Mid-tempo music plays ]
-♪ Have I done something wrong, sir? ♪
-♪ On the contrary, I called you here ♪
♪ Because our odds are beyond scary ♪
♪ Your reputation precedes you, but I have to laugh ♪
-♪ Sir? ♪ -♪ Hamilton, how come ♪
♪ No one can get you on their staff? ♪
-♪ Sir ♪ -♪ Don't get me wrong ♪
♪ You're a young man, of great renown ♪
♪ I know you stole British cannons ♪
♪ When we were still downtown ♪
♪ Nathanael Greene and Henry Knox ♪
♪ Wanted to hire you ♪ -♪ Yeah, to be their secretary ♪
♪ I don't think so ♪ -♪ Now, why are you upset? ♪
-♪ I'm not ♪ -♪ It's all right ♪
♪ You want to fight, you've got a hunger ♪
♪ I was just like you when I was younger ♪
♪ Head full of fantasies of dyin' like a martyr? ♪
-♪ Yes ♪ -♪ Dying is easy, young man ♪
♪ Living is harder ♪
-It's really fair to say that, without Washington,
Hamilton would not have had someone to enable him
to achieve the things that he achieved.
Conversely, without Hamilton, Washington wouldn't have had
someone there to help him and advise him.
When you're in someone like Washington's position,
you don't -- there aren't many people that you can truly trust.
-Hamilton had distinguished himself multiple times
as a warrior.
It was probably one reason why he was frustrated
that he was not then promoted as a warrior,
but then was promoted as a secretary,
an aide-de-camp to George Washington.
-♪ Boom ♪ -♪ I'll write to Congress ♪
♪ And tell 'em you need supplies ♪
♪ You rally the guys ♪
♪ Master the element of surprise ♪
-♪ Chicka-boom ♪
-♪ I'll rise above my station, organize your information ♪
♪ Till we rise to the occasion of our new nation, sir ♪
-♪ Here comes the general ♪ -♪ Rise up ♪
-♪ What? Here comes the general ♪
-♪ Rise up ♪ -♪ What? ♪
♪ Here comes the general ♪ -♪ Rise up ♪
-♪ What? Here comes the general ♪
-♪ What? ♪
-♪ And his right-hand man ♪
-♪ Boom ♪
[ Cannon fires ]
[ Birds chirping ]
-It's rare that you do a show
where you have so many literal touchstones,
places that support the research that you've done.
It's helped keep the fire burning,
you know, day after day, doing the show,
eight shows a week, and being able
to imagine yourself in a very real way
in those same footsteps.
-That would have been Mr. and Mrs. Washington's room.
You're looking at it just as they would have seen it.
-I can't even imagine how much stress he must have been under.
-I can't, either.
-All of them, all those guys, like, how much stress.
They must have been constantly, every day just...
-When you got 20,000 people just right outside your door
who are constantly, you know, trying not to die.
-Trying not to die, trying to figure out
how to stay alive, like... -Exactly.
Literally trying not to die.
-The front parlor would have been used
by General Washington's aide-de-camps,
Hamilton, along with John Laurens.
They were the two prominent secretaries
that worked for Washington here.
All the paperwork it took to administer the Continental Army
is being done in this room here.
-As Washington's aide-de-camp,
Hamilton is doing everything
from sorting through intelligence
to carrying out prisoner exchanges.
He's writing essays. He's writing letters.
He's teaching himself about foreign currencies.
So, he was really using the American Revolution
as a kind of crash course in history and politics.
-Just being in Valley Forge,
you realize how much ground they had to cover.
When he was like, "Retreat, attack, retreat,
we're moving our men back," it's like --
that's, like, miles.
That's like crossing state lines
without a car or horse and carriage.
Those are soldiers that are, like, foot soldiers.
The scope of it was just so much bigger and far more real.
-Y'all be having reenactments out there?
-Yeah, we do it every now and then.
We'll do cannon firing and that kind of thing.
-Will they let us fire a cannon?
-We'll get you on a musket. How's that?
-You know? -There. See?
-Hell, that's -- that's nothing --
that's good. -Yeah.
-I'll fire the... out of a musket.
[ Laughter ]
-Hamilton, by all accounts, was girl-crazy.
And so throughout the Revolutionary War,
he's not only searching for military glory,
but he's searching for the woman of his dreams.
-Where are you taking me?
-I'm about to change your life.
-Then by all means, lead the way.
-Elizabeth Schuyler. It's a pleasure to meet you.
-Schuyler? -My sister.
-Thank you for all your service.
-If it takes fighting a war for us to meet,
it will have been worth it.
-I'll leave you to it.
-Eliza and Alexander essentially met during a war.
Hamilton was camped a couple miles away
from the house that Eliza was staying in.
-This is the house where Elizabeth Schuyler
came to visit with her uncle and aunt.
Her aunt realized that, you know,
it's hard to find a boy during wartime.
They've all gone to the front.
-Go visit Auntie and meet some men.
[ Laughter ] -And she met the guy
who was staying next door -- Alexander Hamilton.
-♪ Helpless ♪ -♪ I am so into you ♪
-♪ Look into your eyes ♪ -♪ I am so into you ♪
-♪ And the sky's the limit ♪ -♪ I'm helpless ♪
-♪ I know I'm ♪ -♪ Down for the count ♪
♪ And I'm ♪ -♪ Drownin' in 'em ♪
-Everyone immediately noticed
that Hamilton and his future sister-in-law,
Angelica, were very enamored of each other.
-Hamilton met Angelica first,
and, oh, their connection is actually really strong
and intense and is intellectual.
-Lin actually credits Angelica
with being the smartest person in the show.
What she could do with her pen,
what she could probably do with a look [Chuckles]
was very, very potent and probably had to be.
-♪ I've been reading "Common Sense" by Thomas Paine ♪
♪ So men say that I'm intense or I'm insane ♪
♪ You want a revolution? I want a revelation ♪
♪ So listen to my declaration ♪
♪ We hold these truths to be self-evident ♪
♪ That all men are created equal ♪
♪ And when I meet Thomas Jefferson ♪
-♪ Oh ♪ -♪ I'm-a compel him ♪
♪ To include women in the sequel ♪
-Work!
-In this period, women were still
very much assumed to have a certain role,
but that said, it's also important to note
that the Revolution politicized women.
It politicized enslaved people.
It politicized people who were there at the time,
living the Revolution. It's important to remember
that it's not just men who assumed that.
-The wives of the founding fathers
also really had a place in history.
They worked as hard as the men did.
And Abigail Adams asked her husband
not to forget the ladies.
-♪ Look around, look around ♪
♪ At how lucky we are to be alive right now ♪
-♪ History is happening in Manhattan ♪
♪ And we just happen to be ♪
♪ In the greatest city in the world ♪
-♪ Work, work ♪ -♪ Angelica ♪
-♪ Work, work ♪ -♪ Eliza ♪
-♪ And Peggy ♪ -♪ Work, work ♪
-♪ The Schuyler sisters ♪ -♪ Work, work ♪
-♪ We're looking for a mind at work ♪
-♪ Work ♪ -♪ Hey ♪
-♪ Work, work ♪ -♪ Hey, whoa-ah ♪
-♪ Work ♪
-♪ In the greatest city ♪ -♪ In the greatest city ♪
-♪ In the wo-o-o-rld ♪
-♪ In the greatest city in the world ♪
-I'm gonna fix myself a gin and tonic
because the only thing in my fridge
is tonic water and some ketchup.
There are three major projects happening right now.
It was our first day of rehearsal.
There's my infant child, who turned two weeks old today.
And then there's the apartment, which is finally ready,
but now doesn't have people to help unpack it.
We worked really hard all weekend,
[Laughing] and this is as far as we got.
We start staging next week,
so we have the week to learn all the music,
52 songs,
not including the ones I haven't written yet.
Today, the second song we taught was "Yorktown,"
and Hamilton's line,
"Then again, my Eliza's expecting me,
not to mention my Eliza's expecting,
so, you know, we got to go, got to get the job done,
got to start a new nation, got to meet my son!"
Like, Hamilton in that moment
is actually where I'm at in my life.
It's like he's got one more battle to fight
before the war is over,
but he's also got a kid on the way,
and his status depends on how he does.
[ Laughing ] I'm in exactly the same place,
which is nuts.
But I'm -- Yeah, I'm basically near the end of act one.
[ Piano plays soft music ]
-[ Rapping ] ♪ The battle of Yorktown ♪
♪ 1781 ♪
-♪ Monsieur Hamilton♪ -♪ Monsieur Lafayette ♪
-♪ In command where you belong ♪
-♪ How you say, no sweat ♪
♪ We're finally on the field ♪
♪ We've had quite a run ♪
-♪ Immigrants ♪ -♪ We get the job done ♪
[ Light laughter ]
-Hamilton keeps badgering Washington
until Washington gives him
his first field command at Yorktown,
and Hamilton does not waste the opportunity.
He led a bayonet charge.
Hamilton's men rose out of the trench,
under the glare of shells exploding in the sky above them.
They charged to the parapet of this fortification,
and within 10 minutes,
he had taken this fortification.
So, Hamilton, who had dreamed of battlefield glory
from the time that he was in his early teens,
suddenly has it big-time at Yorktown.
There were still skirmishes going on,
but for all intents and purposes,
the war ends with Yorktown.
It's clear at that point who will be the victor.
♪♪
-We booked a slot to open the show at the Public Theater,
home of "Hair" and "Chorus Line," "Runaways,"
"Passing Strange," countless other landmark musicals.
-This is one of those nights
where you feel the earth shake a little bit,
you feel the world start to change.
This is opening night of "Hamilton."
Congratulations to all of you. [ Crowd cheers ]
-We've been working on this for 5 1/2 years,
and here we are, pushing it off into the world.
And to see people react to it
and respond to it and be moved by it is --
it's all you could ever hope for, so we're thrilled.
-My parents saw "Runaways" on their wedding night.
This...is in my blood.
[ Laughter ]
-I have never in my life witnessed
a musical that has penetrated the American culture
faster than "Hamilton."
-It's called "Hamilton." It's about Alexander Hamilton.
I know it's at the Public Theater.
Tarik, you saw it, too, right? Quest, you saw it?
-Yeah. Yeah. -What --
How amazing is this play?
-It's life-changing.
-After the first two songs, you --
I looked at my wife, and we were like,
"This might be the greatest thing,
like, we've ever seen ever."
And you kind of look around at the other people
sitting there, like, "Are we right?"
Like, "This is the best thing that's -- Right?
We're all on the same --" But you can't say that
'cause people are acting and performing,
but you're almost in tears.
-We sell out our extensions as quickly as they go on sale,
and the decision is made pretty quickly --
we're going to Broadway.
-On Sunday, tickets go on sale for Broadway,
"Hamilton," Richard Rodgers Theatre.
Be there.
Thank you for coming this afternoon.
[ Crowd cheers ]
-Our show opened on Tuesday, and the world blew up.
This is crazy.
I don't know what the future holds.
I know that our show opened
and everyone freaked out.
And that's where we're at.
-♪ The world turned upside down ♪
♪ Down, down, down, down ♪
-♪ Freedom for America, freedom for France ♪
-♪ Down, down, down ♪
-♪ Got to start a new nation, got to meet my son ♪
-♪ Down, down, down ♪ -♪ We won ♪
-♪ We won ♪
-♪ The world turned upside down ♪
[ Indistinct shouting ]
[ Up-tempo music plays ]
-[ Rapping indistinctly ]
♪ Unh ♪
♪ Six years of labor, these are the fruits ♪
♪ I'm onstage with The...Roots ♪
[ Crowd cheers ]
♪ This is the act upon... ♪
♪ And so we're crackin' the pod ♪
♪ This party's gonna go till like half past 7:00 ♪
♪ I swear to...God, I died and went to heaven ♪
♪ It's The Roots ♪
-Give it up, ladies and gentlemen
for "L" double "M"!
-I've been a fan of The Roots as long as The Roots have existed.
Maybe the most nerve-racking performance
I've ever done was when I knew
Ahmir and Tarik were in the audience.
-What immediately drew me in to "Hamilton"
was this was someone
who, you know, was an emcee in his own right.
Sometimes in hip-hop, we say, "Real recognize real."
So, I could recognize immediately that Lin
was a real one and that this was a real story.
-There's double and triple meanings and layers upon layers.
I mean, I've had to see "Hamilton" eight or nine times
to get references that I didn't get
the first eight times that I saw it.
-What Lin was able to do is create different styles
for each character.
So, George Washington raps
in this very sort of metronomic way
because that is similar to how he thinks.
It's all right on beat.
You know, Lafayette has to figure it out.
Lafayette is -- is rapping in a real, like, simple,
sort of like early-'80s rap cadence at first
and then, by the end, is doing these crazy
double- and triple-time things. -♪ Lafayette ♪
-♪ I'm takin' this horse by the reins ♪
♪ Makin' Redcoats redder with bloodstains ♪
-♪ Lafayette ♪ -♪ And I'm never gonna stop ♪
♪ Until I make 'em drop and burn 'em up ♪
♪ And scatter their remains, I'm ♪
-♪ Lafayette ♪
-♪ Watch me engagin' em, escapin' em, enragin' em ♪
♪ I'm ♪ -♪ Lafayette ♪
-♪ I go to France for more funds ♪
-♪ Lafayette ♪ -♪ I come back with more guns ♪
-In just two to four hip-hop bars,
you know, sometimes there are more lyrics
than a whole, you know, classical song.
-[ Beatboxing ]
[ Light laughter ]
-♪ That's the crunchiest sound ♪
♪ You'll ever hear on the beatbox ♪
♪ And both those lips are in detox ♪
♪ Yeah, slappin' the bass right now ♪
♪ Freestylin' up in your face right now ♪
♪ Oh, yeah, because I'm gaspin', son ♪
♪ Because I'm right next to the ass of Jasperson ♪
[ Laughter ]
I grew up in the '90s,
and I think that's a golden age for hip-hop.
The lyrical dexterity of artists like Mobb Deep and Biggie
and Nas was just incredible.
When I was writing "Hamilton," I listened to "Takeover"
and "Ether" on a loop, on a loop, on a loop.
-Word. -Hip-hop storytelling --
like, where do you start?
Do you start with the story? Do you do start with a lyric?
Does it sort of unlock something else?
-Really, I saw, like, a hole in the rap game.
You know, all the rappers I looked up to were mega stars.
And so if I wanted
to put my little two cents in the rap game,
then it would be from a different perspective.
I thought that I would represent for my neighborhood...
-Yeah. -...and tell their story,
be their voice in a way that nobody has done it.
-And I love the idea of telling the stories
that you haven't heard told before
and suddenly making that fair game,
because I think that's such an important part
of expanding sort of the real estate
that hip-hop can cover. -Yeah.
You know, when it was my time, it was like,
the phrase "keep it real" became the thing.
-Right. -So, it was like,
"Tell the real story."
These things are my thoughts, and let me express them.
It gives you freedom.
In hip-hop, no one can tell you you're wrong
unless the rhymes are wack, but --
[ Both laugh ]
But no one can tell you you're wrong because it's your truth.
-Yeah. -The hip-hop in the musical
has gotten the most attention
'cause it's the most novel
and because Hamilton sings in hip-hop,
but there's jazz, soul, R&B,
and just plain Broadway show tunes, as well.
-♪ Hamilton doesn't hesitate ♪
♪ He exhibits no restraint ♪
♪ He takes and he takes and he takes ♪
♪ And he keeps winning anyway ♪
♪ Changes the game, plays, and he raises the stakes ♪
♪ And if there's a reason he seems to thrive ♪
♪ when so few survive ♪
♪ Then God damn it, I'm willing to wait for it ♪
-♪ Wait for it ♪
-♪ I'm willing to wait for it ♪
-"Wait For It" speaks to Burr and how he sees the world --
a world in which he's seeing contemporaries
who started further back than him lapping him.
-This is a man who lost his entire family, really,
and then lost even extended family.
I mean, he had one sister. He even lost her.
-If Hamilton's response to loss is to go as fast as he can,
Burr's response to loss is,
"I'm not gonna do anything until I know it's the right move.
I'm alive. Other people I love are dead.
There's a reason for that."
-♪ Life doesn't discriminate ♪
♪ Between the sinners and the saints ♪
-♪ It takes and it takes and it takes ♪
-♪ It takes ♪ -♪ And we keep living anyway ♪
-♪ We rise ♪ -♪ We rise ♪
♪ And we fall and we break ♪
-♪ And we fall ♪ -♪ And we make our mistakes ♪
-♪ And if there's a reason I'm still alive ♪
♪ When so many have died, then I'm willing' to ♪
[ Instrumental music plays ]
♪ Wait for it ♪ -♪ Wait for it ♪
-After the war, Hamilton and Burr qualify
to be lawyers at almost exactly the same time.
They then move to opposite ends of Wall Street,
and they are the two rising young men
in the New York legal establishment.
And it was Alexander Hamilton
who personally issued the call
for a Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia
in May 1787
and gave a six-hour speech
in which he proposed his own form of government,
in which he says that there would be a president
who would serve for life on good behavior.
-For Hamilton to stand up and say,
"Hey, let's get this guy in
and sort of make him look pseudo-king-like,"
you know, having just finished the Revolution --
that was really controversial.
It's really after the Constitutional Convention
that Hamilton has his major impact on this debate,
and that is with what becomes known
as "The Federalist Essays."
It's going to confront people's biggest fears
about this new Constitution.
It's a commercial advertisement for the Constitution.
-I've read "The Federalist Papers" many times over.
As an elected official, as a person who takes office,
by swearing oath to the Constitution,
I pretty much want to know what that means, right?
And so it's important not only to understand
what the Constitution is,
but to understand what the principles are behind it.
And that's why you look at "Hamilton."
That's why you look at "The Federalist Papers."
That is the cornerstone of this beautiful idea
we call the American experiment.
-Here we are, back at the scene.
-It's been a long way since 2009.
-Yeah, it's nuts.
The First Lady tweeted last week, "Alexander Hamilton,
we are waiting in the East Wing for you."
-It's incredible. It's incredible.
-It's crazy.
It's very weird to have FLOTUS quote your lyrics.
[ Cheers and applause ]
-Are you all excited? -Yes!
-I am -- I'm so excited!
Well, let me start by thanking
the extraordinary performers from "Hamilton."
[ Cheers and applause ]
I saw the Off-Broadway version of "Hamilton,"
and it was simply, as I tell everybody,
the best piece of art in any form
that I have ever seen in my life.
So, thank you for taking the time out
to spend an entire day here
and to bless us with another performance.
Today they've come here to spend the day with all of you.
I want you to take advantage of this time.
-I'm not a really bright student in the history department.
I've learned so much from this musical
that I wouldn't have normally learned in a history class.
And for you guys to convey history
in the manner that you did --
was that your initial goal, to inspire kids like me?
-In my high school, we didn't have a theater program.
History was my drama program.
I saw each and every moment in history
as the most dramatic moment ever,
which it was to the people who were taking part in it.
You might just take a second and look at from the perspective
of, "Who's the protagonist?
Who's the antagonist? What's at stake?"
You might find a world there to unlock.
[ Orchestra tuning ]
-Here we are, performing not just the opening number,
but an hour worth of material
with our full company and our full band.
It feels like this sort of homecoming,
a full-circle closing.
-Hey, man. -Mr. President.
-Good to see you.
-Thank you for making time for us.
-Absolutely. This is so much fun.
-The first time you had me here was in 2009.
-Right.
-I was just supposed to sing something from "In the Heights."
I sang "Hamilton" instead.
-When you told us,
"Well, I'm gonna do a rap about Alexander Hamilton,"
we said, "Well, good luck with that," right?
-[ Laughs ] Yeah. That's the typical reaction.
-And after the performance, I think all of us understood
not only how much potential it had,
but what it did was capture the fact that, you know,
the founding fathers were, to some degree,
flying by the seats of their pants...
-Absolutely. -...and making it up
as they went along. -Yeah.
-And the fact that the experiment worked
was a testimony to their genius.
And you can draw a direct connection
between what the founders were doing
and what we do today. -Yeah.
-Even today, we really do follow the model of the executive
from what Washington established,
you know, so many years ago --
the two-term presidency, establishing a Cabinet,
Washington sitting at the head.
Allowing for everyone to have their own influence
in policy is -- is pretty significant.
-He's got kind of a very small Cabinet,
and it'll turn out to be Alexander Hamilton
as secretary of treasury,
Henry Knox as secretary of war,
Edmund Randolph as the first attorney general,
and then Thomas Jefferson as secretary of state.
-I think of Jefferson as Bugs Bunny, man.
You know, I think of him as this indefatigable winner,
who kind of comes in with incredible confidence,
gets home.
He's already secretary of state.
And he's like, "All right, well, let's go."
-♪ France is following us to revolution ♪
♪ There is no more status quo ♪
♪ But the sun comes up and the world still spins ♪
-♪ Ah-ooo ♪
-Thomas Jefferson has a lot to catch up on.
So, when we meet Jefferson, he's still singing jazz songs,
and the rest of the United States
has moved on to rap music.
And he doesn't -- he doesn't know that.
[ Chuckling ] Nobody told him.
[ Piano plays jazz ]
-♪ So, what did I miss? ♪
♪ What did I miss, huh? ♪
♪ Virginia, my home sweet home, I wanna give you a kiss ♪
♪ Mwah ♪
♪ I've been in Paris meeting lots of different ladies ♪
♪ I guess I basically missed the late '80s ♪
♪ I traveled the wide, wide world and came back to this ♪
He misses the whole war in France
and comes back and is made secretary of state.
-He was the perfect person to do this,
having come back from this diplomatic mission.
So, it was his job to try to represent the United States
and to let Washington know about what he knew.
-♪ Mr. Jefferson, welcome home, sir ♪
♪ You've been off in Paris for so long ♪
-♪ So, what did I miss? ♪
-In Jefferson's absence,
Alexander Hamilton has soared from obscurity
to one of the top posts in government.
-Alexander Hamilton, as treasury secretary,
was deputy president in many ways.
-Hamilton has to create much of the federal government
from scratch -- first budget systems,
first tax systems, first customs service,
first Coast Guard, first monetary policy,
first central bank,
which was the direct forerunner of the Federal Reserve.
-Hamilton had the core idea about an aggressive role
for government to help build an economy.
-Hamilton created financial instruments
that enabled people to trade
and, therefore, facilitate the movement of capital.
[ Bell clanging ]
-While Hamilton was treasury secretary,
there were only five securities traded on Wall Street.
Three of them were treasury securities
created by Alexander Hamilton.
The fourth was the stock of the Bank of New York,
created by Alexander Hamilton.
The fifth was the stock of our first central bank
created by -- you know who -- Alexander Hamilton.
-I look at Alexander Hamilton
as the patron saint of Wall Street.
-We're on the floor. This is -- -Yeah, it was --
-We're living in Hamilton's world here.
-It's true.
And, you know, as I was coming down to meet you this morning...
-Uh-huh. -...I got the chills.
When you're actually here and you just visualize
what was taking place 200 years ago,
it's quite extraordinary.
-The problem was, Hamilton was the ultimate elitist.
He came from a very humble background,
but he built an institution
that concentrated wealth.
-If you've lived through a period
where the financial system
has caused a lot of damage to the economy,
there's this fear --
fear over concentrated power and wealth
and fear of the unfairness that might bring.
And Hamilton's defining strength was to try to figure out
what was the pragmatic solution
in the interest of the most people.
-What happens here has a direct impact on all of our lives.
We're all connected.
And the fact is, is if you want that bridge
built around the block
from that school in your neighborhood,
you've got to raise money to do it.
More often than not, it's gonna be raised right here.
-Hamilton is picturing this robust,
strong central government that is the engine of finance
and engine of democracy
and unites our states.
Jefferson is picturing this agrarian paradise,
where farmers are left alone and do their thing.
-One could say that Jefferson was --
could represent the populist interests at the time,
the small farmer,
the people living out in the country.
But were they forecasting a philosophical divide
that runs through our political system?
Absolutely.
-It becomes really clear --
and Washington realizes this finally in 1792 --
things are not going so well
between the two members of his Cabinet.
-So, we're in the mansion's dining room,
and it's set for the 1790 dinner party
of George Washington and his Cabinet.
-It's set for that now? -It is set for that.
If they walked in right now, they would be ready.
-A lot of people don't know that the fight over the debt plan
and establishing a national bank...
-Mm-hmm. -... happened here.
-♪ The issue on the table ♪
♪ Secretary Hamilton's plan to assume state debt ♪
♪ And establish a national bank ♪
♪ Uh, Secretary Jefferson, you have the floor, sir ♪
-The states had borrowed heavily from the French,
from the Spanish, from domestic lenders
to fund the cost of the war,
and there were these big debts.
-There was $50 million in outstanding federal debt,
$25 million in state debt,
and Hamilton wanted the federal government
to assume the responsibility for the state debt.
-♪ Oww ♪
-♪ But Hamilton forgets, his plan would have ♪
♪ The government assume states' debts ♪
♪ Now, place your bets as to who that benefits ♪
♪ The very seat of government where Hamilton sits ♪
-♪ Not true ♪ -♪ Ew ♪
♪ If the shoe fits, wear it ♪
♪ If New York's in debt, why should Virginia bear it? ♪
♪ Uh, our debts are paid, I'm afraid ♪
♪ Don't tax the South 'cause we got it made in the shade ♪
-Jefferson's position is,
"The Southern states have ways of making income.
It doesn't make sense for us to bail you guys out."
Hamilton's point being that,
"Well, a lot of the reason you're okay is
because you don't pay for labor where you are,
and you've got slaves working your farms."
-Hamilton insisted, as a matter of national honor
and to establish America's, you know, future greatness,
that it was imperative to pay off that debt in full.
-♪ If you assume the debts, the union gets ♪
♪ A new line of credit, a financial diuretic ♪
♪ How do you not get it? ♪
♪ If we're aggressive and competitive ♪
♪ The union gets a boost ♪
♪ You'd rather give it a sedative? ♪
-The fights between Jefferson and Hamilton
that they had across this table are --
are the fights we're still having.
-Yes. Well, I can't imagine
what dinner around that table would have been like that night.
Washington, I'm sure, is sitting there stone-faced,
trying to placate everyone at the same time.
-♪ Hey, turn around, bend over ♪
♪ I'll show you where my shoe fits ♪
-Alexander! -♪ I'm... ♪
-♪ Madison, Jefferson, take a walk ♪
♪ Hamilton, take a walk ♪
-Hip-hop is the way for young men
and young people to still --
-Test each other. -Yeah, to test each other
without anyone being hurt,
and everyone, you know, can go back home
at the end of the day.
-But the stakes are not, "Who's the best rapper?"
The stakes are,
"What direction are we going to go in as a country?"
Every rap battle sets the historical precedent.
That is the highest stakes you could have for a rap battle,
higher, even, than "8 Mile."
Something that really sort of spoke to me
when I was, you know, reading this story
and beginning to research and write it
is that moment when we trade away the capital
in exchange for the debt plan. -Right, right.
-And we call it "The Room Where it Happens."
-Right.
-And what have you learned being in that room?
I mean, we're in that room.
We're in the room where the sausage gets made.
-I'm in most of the rooms. There's no doubt about it.
And you know, what you learn is
that everybody who comes to a room to make decisions,
they're bringing the constraints that have been placed on them
by their constituencies. -Yeah.
-And the only way anything gets done
is if people recognize the truth of the person across the table.
-♪ Two Virginians and an immigrant ♪
♪ Walk into a room ♪
-♪ Diametrically opposed, foes ♪
-You have to be able to get in their heads
and see through their eyes in order for things to happen.
-"Here's the problem, Mr. President."
"Okay. How are we gonna solve it?"
I mean, it's pretty simple.
-♪ They emerge with a compromise ♪
♪ Having opened doors that were previously closed ♪
-♪ Bros ♪
-Check this out.
This is the room where it happened.
Hamilton says, "You got to help me pass my financial plan."
Jefferson goes, "Oh, well, okay. Come over for dinner.
I'll invite Madison. We'll work it out."
And now it's an office building,
and this is where the smokers hang out from this building.
♪ The room where it happened ♪
-♪ The room where it happened ♪
-♪ No one else was in the room where it happened ♪
♪ The room where it happened, the room where it happened ♪
♪ No one really knows how the game is played ♪
♪ The art of the trade, how the sausage gets made ♪
♪ We just assume that it happens ♪
♪ But no one else was in the room where it happened ♪
-A lot of that debate was not really
a debate about central banking.
It was a debate about power.
-The federal government came in and bailed out the states.
And so I guess, in that sense, it was the first bailout.
-♪ Alexander Hamilton ♪ -♪ What did they say to you ♪
♪ To get you to sell New York City down the river? ♪
-♪ Alexander Hamilton ♪
-♪ Did Washington know about the dinner? ♪
♪ Was there presidential pressure to deliver? ♪
-On paper, what looks like a very dry history lesson,
Hamilton traded away New York as the capital
in exchange for the passage of his debt plan.
[ Pretends to snore ]
Um, but if you tell it from the perspective of Aaron Burr,
who is watching all these people leapfrog past him into power,
it's a thrilling dramatic moment,
and it's also the turning point for Burr
to stop hanging back on his heels
and lean forward and say, "I want in on this life."
-♪ I -- I wanna be in the room where it happens ♪
♪ The room where it happens ♪
-He's a super-fan of the arena.
He's watching Hamilton in there making things happen.
And this is the moment where he decides,
"Oh, my God, I got to get in there."
-♪ I've got to be ♪
-♪ In the room where it happens ♪
-♪ I've got to be ♪
-♪ In the room where it happens ♪
-♪ I've got to be ♪
-♪ In the room where it happens ♪
♪ I got to be I got to be, I wanna be ♪
♪ In the ro-o-o-o-m ♪
-♪ The room where it happens ♪
-♪ Click, boom ♪
[ Music stops ]
[ Birds chirping ]
[ Piano plays mid-tempo music ]
-It's picturesque in a way
that words can hardly describe it.
Every corner of this place has another essence of calm.
It's beautiful.
Washington had been serving for 45 years of his life,
and he wanted to return home
and actually enjoy the fruits of the labor
that he had invested in -- in the building
and the establishing of the government itself.
Washington is revered as the father of our country,
but our understanding of history goes awry
when we only seek
or care to listen to one part of a story.
From the moment I knew I was gonna be playing Washington,
it was the first thing that came into my mind --
the slave question --
the reality of the fact that he owned people.
I'll never make peace with it.
I tried to, till I stood in the slave quarters,
and there's no way to reconcile that.
If anything, it brings to bear the entire truth
of who this man was.
And some parts are ugly.
Some parts are abhorrent.
But there's nothing that I can do to change those things.
And there's nothing in my portrayal
that would suggest that we forgive any of that.
-You can't pretend that they didn't do things, right?
I mean, there was a country that was founded,
and we're sitting here.
There were great things that were done,
but there were terrible things that were done.
And for me, the best thing to do is to see both of them.
-Look at Jefferson.
You know, Jefferson wants to --
this myth around the yeoman farmer.
Wow. Easy for a slaveholder to say.
-The interesting thing about him
is that he is the author,
the principal drafter of this document that says,
"All men are created equal,"
and that is a paradox.
-You don't have to separate these things with Jefferson.
He can have written this incredible document,
and several incredible documents that we all sort of --
with things that we all believe in.
And he sucks.
You know, I think those are both true,
and those have to be both true.
I think we really have to stop separating them,
because that's where you get into trouble.
That's when you stop letting people be whole people.
I disagree politically with a lot of rappers
that I listen to. You know what I'm saying?
There's sort of rampant
misogyny and homophobia in a lot of rap music.
That doesn't make them less brilliant rappers.
They're both true.
-These are not perfect people.
These are deeply flawed people.
But they made contributions,
and I think what this means is we have to acknowledge,
right now in the 21st century,
how much of what we have today
is built on the backs
of people whose contribution never gets acknowledged.
-What we're trying to do with the cast
and the larger gesture of this show is say,
"Here's a group of people that you think you can't relate to.
Maybe we can take down some of those barriers
and allow a reflection to be truer."
-What I think is that there's something
incredibly pure and fun about the casting,
that our imaginations really will let us take these leaps
and that we don't have to be so closed-minded,
especially in the theater, that it can be about --
It can be whatever we want it to be.
-♪ I anticipate with pleasing expectation ♪
♪ That retreat in which I promised myself to realize ♪
♪ The sweet enjoyment of partaking ♪
♪ In the midst of my fellow citizens ♪
-Washington had an extraordinary American life.
I think the most extraordinary thing he did
was step down from the presidency,
ensuring that this American experiment
would continue without him.
By modeling a peaceful transition
from president to president,
he puts us eons ahead
of every other fledgling democracy on earth.
-♪ George Washington's going home ♪
-♪ Teach 'em how to say goodbye ♪
-♪ George Washington's going home ♪
-♪ You and I ♪
-♪ George Washington's going home ♪
-♪ Home ♪ -♪ Going home ♪
-♪ George Washington's going home ♪
-♪ History has its eyes on you ♪
-♪ George Washington's going home ♪
-♪ Yeah ♪
♪ We're gonna teach 'em how to say goodbye ♪
-♪ Teach 'em how to say goodbye ♪
-♪ To say goodbye ♪ -♪ To say goodbye ♪
-♪ To say goodbye one last ti-i-i-i-me ♪
-♪ One last time ♪
-♪ Ti-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-me ♪
[ Crowd cheers ]
-I think it's so important
to take George Washington off the pedestal.
These were real people who lived and died.
I think one of the things we really tried to do
with the show is show them all as flawed.
There's no one who's --
There's no saints in this show, not a one.
-It's really logical to ask the question,
given all of the ways in which he's extreme,
"What kind of a guy was Hamilton?"
I would say to a lot of people a lot of the time,
he was an arrogant, irritating, ass...
-His big flaw -- his inability to shut up,
his tenacity, his drive --
they're all great things in the war.
It's great when we see him writing to Congress
and saying, "We need more stuff."
But in the absence of a common enemy,
that virtue goes inward.
They go from assets to flaws.
And that explains things, like the Reynolds scandal.
This young woman, Maria Reynolds,
shows up at Hamilton's door one night.
She gives him this sob story
about her husband who abandoned her.
She asks him for money.
She needs his help.
-And he felt bad for her,
so he ended up giving her some money,
but that turned into an affair.
Her husband ended up finding out about the affair
and decided to make some money out of it.
-Hamilton forks over the blackmail money
and continues the relationship for about a year.
-The story leaks but with fuzzy details,
and Hamilton gets accused of speculating
in treasury securities with James Reynolds.
-So he decides he's gonna write a pamphlet
in which he argues --
and in his mind, this is the truth --
that, no, no, no, he's a perfectly correct public figure.
He's never done anything bad as a public figure.
But as a private figure,
he just committed adultery
and paid blackmail for it.
-It really reads like a cross between a dissertation
and a "Dear Penthouse" letter.
He's not bragging, but the language is complicated.
-Eliza was so traumatized
by the publication of the Reynolds Pamphlet
that she never publicly commented on what had happened.
-What we have is a letter from Angelica to Eliza
saying, "You married an Icarus,
and he flew too close to the sun."
-♪ I'm erasing myself from the narrative ♪
♪ Let future historians wonder how Eliza reacted ♪
♪ When you broke her heart ♪
♪ You have torn it all apart ♪
♪ I'm watching it bu-u-u-u-rn ♪
-I love the notion, which is true,
that Eliza burned a lot of their correspondence.
She wanted Hamilton to be known for his political acts.
So I re-cast that burning of the letters
as an act of anger
and acknowledgement of betrayal.
-She didn't really have options.
She couldn't just leave him.
She had eight children.
On top of that, there were a lot of hardships.
-The second act of Hamilton's life
centers around the loss of his child.
His eldest son, Philip, is gunned down
in a duel about Hamilton.
The duel began over a disagreement
because George Eacker had said unkind things
about Philip's father.
-As ridiculous as it seems that Philip
would go and duel for his father,
or that people would duel anyway back then, you know,
it's the same as people going out
and fighting somebody or, you know,
because they said something about their mother
or they said something about their family
or their sister or their brother or their dad.
-Hamilton was absolutely unhinged
by the death of his son.
And when you see paintings of Hamilton
from those later years,
he suddenly has aged tremendously.
There definitely is a somber note to his final years.
-Can we get back to politics? -Please.
-♪ Yo, every action has its equal, opposite reaction ♪
♪ John Adams...the bed ♪
♪ I love the guy, but he's in traction ♪
♪ Poor Alexander Hamilton, he is missing in action ♪
♪ So now I'm facing Aaron Burr ♪ -♪ Aaron Burr ♪
-♪ With his own faction ♪
-It could be argued that Burr
was not a very good politician.
In that election of 1800,
when it's Burr and Thomas Jefferson,
when Burr comes really close
to becoming the President of the United States,
he's backed in that race by two different parties.
That is how malleable his beliefs were.
[ Chuckles ]
-People will say, "Boy, Burr's a handy guy
to have with you in an election,
because he doesn't have really strict principles."
Hamilton writes a letter saying, "He has no principles!"
Like, "Why is that good?! This cannot be good!"
It ends up that there's a tie
between Burr and Jefferson,
gets thrown into the House to be decided.
And so there's Hamilton facing the future
of one or the other of these men,
who he really doesn't like, are gonna be president.
-♪ Oh ♪
-♪ The people are asking to hear my voice ♪
-♪ Oh ♪
-♪ The country is facing a difficult choice ♪
-♪ Oh ♪
-♪ And if you were to ask me who I'd promote ♪
-♪ Oh ♪ -♪ Jefferson has my vote ♪
-Thomas Jefferson becomes president.
Aaron Burr becomes the vice president.
When Jefferson ran for re-election,
Burr goes back to New York State
and runs for governor,
only to find that he is again thwarted
in his ambition by Alexander Hamilton,
and Burr loses for governor.
You know, at this point, Burr flies into a rage.
It seems like at every stage of his career,
the man blocking his path of advancement
is the same Alexander Hamilton.
-Alexander Hamilton is the patron saint of our museum.
-Nice! -And so, yes,
you're in Hamiltonian country, Leslie,
but we'll do our best to try and give a little bit
of a balance for you here as we go forward.
-Okay. -[ Laughs ]
-All around you are original Hamilton artifacts
and some others we've brought up.
But why don't we take a look
at some of the treasures that we have here?
-Awesome. -Lin, Leslie,
this is a book published in 1804 --
"A Collection of the Facts and Documents
Related to the Death
of Major-General Alexander Hamilton."
You want to read some of those?
-Sure. -"Political opposition
can never absolve gentlemen
from the necessity of a rigid adherence
to the laws of honor and the rules of decorum.
I neither claim such privilege nor indulge it in others."
-Burr, one day, reads in an Albany newspaper
that Alexander Hamilton, at a dinner party,
has uttered a despicable opinion about him.
Burr challenges Hamilton to a duel.
-Hmm. A reply. [ Laughter ]
It's several pages. "Sir, I have maturely reflected
on the subject of your letter of the 18th last,
and the more I have reflected, the more I have become convinced
that I could not, without manifest impropriety,
make the avowal or disavowal
which you seem to think necessary."
-Hamilton could have ended the whole affair
just by apologizing
if he had inadvertently given Burr offense.
-"'Tis evident that the phrase, 'still more despicable,'
emits of infinite shades from very light to very dark.
How am I to judge of the degree intended,
or how shall I annex any precise idea
to language so indefinite?"
-If you and I were getting into something, I would send you --
You know, I might piss you off on Twitter
and then you send me a text
and I send you a text back, and then it's on.
I mean, these guys had to --
They wrote long letters,
you know, in impeccable penmanship.
There was so much time for it to cool off,
for it to not get to where it got to.
-And it goes on and on.
-Can you imagine getting a letter like this back then?
Like, "Wait, I sent you a paragraph."
Do you know what I mean? -"I have the honor to be
A. Ham."
-I think, from a modern outlook,
the practice of dueling makes absolutely no sense -- right? --
because it means two guys go out onto a field in early morning
and shoot at each other because they're angry at each other.
What does that accomplish, right? Seemingly nothing.
But people didn't duel to kill each other,
which is a really hard thing to get your brain around.
They went to a dueling ground to prove
that they were brave enough to be there,
and thus were men of merit.
-"Your letter has furnished me with new reasons
for requiring a definite reply.
I have the honor to be, sir, your obedient A. Burr."
Wow. -That's great.
-That's fantastic. -Lawyered.
It's Burr lookin at his life and saying,
"Wow, at every point along the way, my barrier was you.
What do you have to say for yourself?"
Hamilton, smart-ass as he is, is saying,
"You're gonna have to be more specific than that.
I say a lot of... about you."
-These are 18th-century dueling pistols.
The first thing to do is, you would pick up your weapon
and keep it vertical,
and you would put some powder in.
And then you would take out the rammer.
You invert it and ram the powder down.
-Okay, and you would --
-There's so much time to apologize.
[ Laughter ]
-At dawn on a July morning in 1804,
traveling in separate boats,
Hamilton and Burr travel
up the Hudson River to Weehawken,
across the Hudson River
from where West 42nd Street in Manhattan is.
-Hamilton had a lot of insecurities and vulnerabilities
about his reputation because of his origins.
Over the course of his life,
10 times he almost got involved in a duel.
All of those times, he negotiated his way out.
And in most affairs of honor, that's what happened.
Unfortunately, with Burr in 1804,
they don't manage to do that.
-♪ 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 ♪
♪ Number 10 paces, fire ♪
[ Gunshot ]
-And we get to his final moments.
There's just him, this bullet coming at him,
and all the thoughts that can ping through his brain
between that bullet leaving the gun and hitting him.
-I imagine death so much, it feels more like a memory.
Is this where it gets me --
on my feet, several feet ahead of me?
I see it coming.
Do I run or fire my gun or let it be?
There is no beat, no melody.
He does a tally sheet.
This is -- This is Hamilton.
He thinks about the things he's done in his life.
He thinks about the country he's leaving behind
that didn't exist when he got there.
He thinks about the people he's gonna see on the other side.
-Laurens leads a soldiers' chorus on the other side.
My son is on the other side.
He's with my mother on the other side.
Washington is watching from the other side.
Teach me how to say goodbye.
♪ Rise up, rise up ♪
♪ Rise up ♪
♪ Eliza ♪
-And in the last moment,
the snag that keeps him from going there is Eliza,
because he leaves her behind with a lot.
And then he does it anyway.
He points his gun up at the sky in that final moment.
-My love, take your time.
[ Sobs ] I'll see you on the other side.
[ Sobs ]
♪ Raise a glass to freedom ♪
-♪ He aims his pistol at the sky ♪
-Wait! [ Gunshot ]
[ Mid-tempo dramatic music plays ]
-There's a lot more he could have done.
The fact that it went down the way that it did is a tragedy
for both of them and for all of us.
You know, he was a fighter and a survivor for a long time.
He had risen to a certain station in life
by the time him and Hamilton ended up
on the grounds in Weehawken.
He wasn't friendless. He wasn't jobless.
I mean, he had risen to that station based on relationships
and based on accomplishments.
I think that our show is doing a really good job
of reminding us
that all of us are more than one thing.
-♪ Now I'm the villain in your history ♪
♪ I was too young and blind to see ♪
♪ I should've known ♪
♪ I should've known the world was wide enough ♪
♪ For both Hamilton and me ♪
-If that's all you're looking at,
is our worst act on our worst day,
any one of us could be painted as a villain.
It's really about the totality of someone.
-How much time do we get on this Earth?
We don't know.
They don't tell us at the outset how much time we get.
It's something I've been sort of grappling with
and terrified with.
I think we all grapple with it. I think we all grapple
with the paradox of knowing tomorrow's not promised,
but making plans anyway. You know?
Hamilton walked into that duel.
He had a lunch date with a client
on the books that same day.
You don't plan for your life to end.
-♪ Let me tell you what I wish I'd known ♪
♪ When I was young and dreamed of glory ♪
♪ You have no control
♪ Who lives, who dies, who tells your story ♪
-President Jefferson. -I give him this --
his financial system was a work of genius.
I couldn't undo it if I tried.
And I tried.
-Hamilton built our modern economy.
And once we built it here in the United States,
the rest of the world looked around and said,
"Pretty good idea." -Alexander Hamilton, I think,
is one of the more uniquely American founders
because this man came from nothing
and rose to the highest levels of serving this country.
He proved, the condition of your birth
should not determine the outcome of your life.
-Alexander Hamilton is somewhere going, "Thank you.
Finally, someone has given me the respect.
I created this whole fin--
I created what money is and the bank systems.
I created all of that. I got no thanks for that?"
-It wasn't easy to get to where we are today.
But it was dictated by and led by a vision.
We're a blessed nation to have had our founders --
such remarkable men.
-I think when faced with the incredible
three lifetimes Hamilton lived while he was on this Earth,
it forces you to reckon with,
"Well, what am I doing with my life?"
That's the thing you're always up against
when you're writing something that's big.
It's, "God, can I be proud of this at the end of the day?
If this show opens and closes in a day,
will I regret the six years I put into it?"
-The Tony goes to "Hamilton."
[ Cheers and applause ]
-I'm well aware that the outside part of my life,
the whole zeitgeist-y moment that is happening --
if this were a movie,
there would be newspapers spinning and flash bulbs.
That's what this section of the movie would be.
-And the Tony goes to... -And the Tony goes to...
-Hamilton."
[ Cheers and applause ]
-Alexander Hamilton was a dreamer.
I stand on this stage tonight surrounded by dreamers.
[ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪
[ Birds chirping ]
-I keep waiting for life to go back to normal.
We've finished unpacking our apartment.
My piano's still out of tune.
I haven't gotten around to that yet.
I knew that "Hamilton" was gonna change my life.
But I didn't anticipate
how much we'd help Hamilton's legacy in turn.
Not just Hamilton but also Eliza,
for whom Hamilton's legacy was so important.
[ Soft music plays ]
-♪ Eliza ♪
-♪ I put myself back in the narrative ♪
-♪ Eliza ♪
-♪ I stop wasting time on tears ♪
♪ I live another 50 years ♪
♪ It's not enough ♪ -♪ Eliza ♪
-"Hamilton" captures the spirit of American entrepreneurship
and making it and hustle.
I think if Hamilton were alive today,
he would look back and say
America succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.
-♪ You could have done so much more ♪
♪ If you only had time ♪
♪ And when my time is up, have I done enough? ♪
♪ Will they tell your story? ♪
-I feel like Hamilton chose me.
He reached out of the Chernow book
and grabbed me
and wouldn't let me go until I told his story.
You can't manufacture another "Hamilton."
I'll never write another "Hamilton."
"Hamilton" is singular --
the man and the creation of the show.
I feel like my responsibility
is just to sort of keep my eyes open
and live it as slowly as possible,
because I am aware musical theater
does not get off the arts page often.
And here we are.
-♪ I can't wait to see you again ♪
♪ It's only a matter of ♪
-♪ Ti-i-i-me ♪
-♪ Will they tell your story? ♪
-♪ Time ♪
-♪ Who lives? Who dies? Who tells your story? ♪
-♪ Ti-i-i-me ♪
-♪ Will they tell your story? ♪
-♪ Ti-i-i-me ♪
-♪ Who lives? Who dies? ♪
♪ Who tells your story-y-y? ♪
-All right, drop the beat.
-[ Beatboxing ]
-♪ Folks on the next train ♪
♪ Ah, yeah, and he's comin' from downtown and uptown ♪
♪ Yeah, Renée's always a-breakin' it down ♪
♪ Oh, man, throw me in the gar-bage ♪
♪ 'Cause I can't compete with her decolletage ♪
♪ Ah, bien ♪
♪ Yes, I'm rappin' in French ♪
♪ I am the hench-man ♪
♪ I'm a mensch ♪
♪ Really, I'm a mensch, man ♪
♪ Yeah, don't put me on the bench ♪
♪ I'm the next man ♪
♪ To get into this freestyle cipher ♪
♪ I'm a 25-to-lifer, I like ya ♪
♪ This is freestyle for the doc ♪
♪ I don't stop, I'm hip-hop ♪
♪ Yeah, I got that chips and guac ♪
♪ Oh, 'cause I'm spicy as hell ♪
♪ Ah, yeah, so you go run and tell that ♪
♪ Tell them I'm good at it, too ♪
♪ Renée's a beast backstage ♪
♪ She wouldn't show you ♪
-Ooh! [ Applause ]
-Hey! -That was good.
-[ Laughs ]
-Every day! Every day, he knows what to say.
[ Laughter ]