The founding fathers were white, and many owned black slaves. The cast of “Hamilton” is mostly nonwhite. Can you tell me about your thinking as you wrote and cast the show?
Miranda This was a constant conversation between me and Tommy. Our goal was: This is a story about America then, told by America now, and we want to eliminate any distance — our story should look the way our country looks. Then we found the best people to embody these parts. I think it’s a very powerful statement without having to be a statement.
As for the question of slavery, which is the great original sin of this country, it’s in the third line of the show. But it’s this thing that keeps getting kicked down the field. Hamilton and Burr were part of the [abolitionist] New York Manumission Society, so they were actually very progressive. But there’s only so much time you can spend on it when there’s no end result to it.
Odom Jr. In the first two minutes of this show, Lin steps forward and introduces himself as Alexander Hamilton, and Chris steps forward and says he’s George Washington, and you never question it again. When I think about what it would mean to me as a 13-, 14-year-old kid, to get this album or see this show — it can make me very emotional. And I so look forward to the day I get to see an Asian-American Burr.
Miranda That’ll be the note that goes with the school productions: If this show ends up looking like the actual founding fathers, you messed up.
“Miranda Not just young people but people. We have deified them so much; they’re on rocks in South Dakota. But they were people, and the flaws they had creep into everything we have now. The fights Jefferson and Hamilton have in the show are the fights we are still having.”
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