“I just sort of fell in love with that kind of ‘going from the mail room to the CEO story’ that is Lafayette,” Diggs said. “It was a really interesting challenge for me, and still is, to create a through line [for his character] because he’s popping in and out in the first act. He’s setting the tone for Hamilton’s homies. That’s sort of Lafayette’s practical function. But I want his story to be functional.”
Diggs credits the show’s director Tommy Kail with helping him find Lafayette’s story, which comes to a head in “Guns and Ships.”
As for Jefferson, Diggs zeroed in on the Virginian’s ability “speak beautifully about freedom and liberty and own 600 people.”
“He was the kind of guy who could win over anybody with his prose. By all accounts he was a sort of meeker person, he was not necessarily a charismatic person. But his writing is undeniable. And that’s the thing we really wanted to show off,” Diggs said. “We wanted to try to create somebody who really honestly believes all those things. To me that [ability] had to come from a place of place of supreme privilege, that’s how he gets to have that swag and ease walking through the world. He never had to think about the survival element.”
[…]
On occasion the show’s themes of immigration, meritocracy, bitter political feuds, or war intersect with current events. Suddenly a song or a line takes on a deeper meaning, like the night of November 13, 2015 when terrorists killed 128 people in Paris.
“When Paris was on fire, all of Lafayette’s stuff was so palpable and heavy,” Diggs said. “Of a debt owed and when we did ‘Yorktown’ that night I was crying. I was standing on top of a chair, and I was just crying. One thing this show does is illustrating the symbiotic relationship we’ve had for a long time [with France].”
Aside from drawing parallels with today’s political and cultural climate “Hamilton” considers the meaning of legacy and roots, to “look at where you are, look at where you started.”
Keenly aware of where he is, he knows where he started: the son of a San Francisco bus driver, who once spent many a night couch surfing and living just at the poverty line in his childhood home. But Diggs overcame the odds to debut on Broadway and become one of its biggest stars.
“If this step forward can happen for me, it can happen for anybody,” said Diggs.
