Give Us A Rundown Of All The Minor Characters In Dig Those Rhythm And Blues And Their Roots In Dear Evan Hansen Canon Pleae
>:) with pleasure. here’s a link to the fic for anyone who still needs to get caught up. now, the rundown:
“I don’t know, like, any of these songs,” Kayla yells. Everyone has to yell here if they want to be heard more than six inches away. “Who even picks these?”
“Probably the DJ.”
“They should take requests. Freddie, didn’t they take requests in middle school?”
“Yeah, they did,” Freddie says, chewing on his lip. “But they never played any of mine. Do you have chapstick?”
kayla and freddie are both from the novel, with one fleeting appearance as evan is walking the halls on the first day of school.
Kayla Mitchell is showing off her Invisalign to Freddie Lin. (I could ask one of them to sign my cast, but no offense, I don’t need signatures from kids who register as low as I do on the relevance meter.)
i thought the concept of a high schooler showing off invisalign to their friend was kind of funny, and extrapolated that to the “theater kids who share chapstick and water bottles” friendship i gave them. also, kayla gets one line in the form of an Online Post amid Social Media Reactions to connor’s death, which i had forgotten about until now.
Kayla Mitchell: Never thought CM would go out like that.
has any teenager ever posted like that? the world may never know.
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Sam pops out of the crowd behind Kayla. He’s wearing a hat. It’s not working. “Hey, guys.”
“Hi, Sam,” Kayla and Freddie say, both going in for hugs.
sam is also from the novel, and shows up a couple times as a kid who sorta-kinda knows evan and occasionally talks to him at lunch, as a barometer of evan’s changing social status. first, shortly after delivering the initial batch of emails to the murphys:
My usual table has plenty of open seats. I take one. As I’m sitting down, someone says, “Hey, Evan.”
The kid seated across from me looks familiar, but I don’t know his name.
“Sam,” he says. “We have English together.”
“Oh. Right. Hey.”
Sam resumes eating. I stare into his thick forest of hair. Where did he come from? Has he always been here?
later, when people are forgetting about connor:
As I’m inspecting the room, as surreptitiously as I can, I spot Sam. My fellow lonely loner. Except he’s seated at a table across the cafeteria. The last few days he sat at my table. We even chatted a little bit. Meaning, we said “Hey” to each other a few times. I figured we were the same kind of person. We both pack lunches from home. We both prefer to keep to ourselves. We both have nowhere better to sit in the cafeteria. Turns out I was wrong about that last one. Apparently even Sam has options.
it seemed very in-character for evan to just not realize that all these kids are in the drama club and hang out with jared, his only real friend, on a semi-regular basis, so in it went.
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“Who was that?”
“Naomi. We’re on the same debate team.” So debate is on Alana’s list of extracurriculars, along with MUN, quiz bowl, homecoming committee, a million other clubs that don’t put up posters in every hallway, and stalking the drama club. “We’re friends. Well, maybe not, like, officially friends, but acquaintances. Close acquaintances, though.”
“Fun. Who’s the guy?”
“I don’t know. I just know that was her friend Isabelle with them.” Alana’s doing the hand-wringing thing again. She must have it bad. “I should go. But it was nice catching up!”
naomi and isabelle are from the movie, played by julia chen myers and avery bederman, respectively. here they are at the first meeting of the connor project, with isabelle on the left and naomi on the right.
my scene-by-scene analysis of (almost) every time they appear, with the goal of proving that naomi was originally written to be alana’s girlfriend, got so long that i made it a completely separate post. here’s the conclusion of that post to get the point across:
so what we know is: early in the school year, naomi and isabelle are together constantly, but once naomi has one (1) conversation with alana, they’re apart more and more often. they show up to connor project meetings together, even when most students have stopped going. but after only us, they’re never seen together again, and naomi hangs out with alana instead. and a scene that would have more clearly shown isabelle’s separation from naomi late in the movie was filmed but not included in the final cut.
does this prove anything on its own? not necessarily. does it support the possibility that the cut scene exploring something that wasn’t in the stage show was a subplot about alana dating naomi and the resulting strain on naomi & isabelle’s friendship? i’d say so. is someone going to write a fic featuring the alana-naomi-isabelle love triangle that may or may not have been in the first cut of the movie? i’m already there.
some highlights: first, here’s the one onscreen conversation between naomi and alana, also the only time naomi speaks.
ALANA: So the memorial’s really just an opportunity for all of us to come together as a community and remember Connor. And celebrate who he was. Would you want to speak or perform?
NAOMI: I didn’t really know him. I’m sorry.
ALANA: That’s okay.
NAOMI: Bye.
during you will be found, isabelle is in the library wearing the famed leather jacket.
and naomi sits at lunch with alana, but not isabelle, after evan tells the truth.
i liked the idea of alana having a girlfriend in the movie (as you can tell from that post, lol) and REALLY liked the idea of her maybe-unwittingly being in a lesbian love triangle with two longtime best friends who have a falling-out over it. (especially since it gave me the chance to unsubtly mirror jared and evan’s relationship.) i also jumped on the opportunity to reuse alana’s Close Acquaintances phrasing, since she didn’t say it about connor in the movie.
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“Yeah, I know Zoe. We’re both in jazz band.”
That completes Jared’s patchy mental picture of Oliver — hanging around Zoe and the blonde girl whose name escapes him, the three of them playing the school fight song at pep rallies and lugging around instrument cases and inexplicably wearing letter jackets.
[…]
They arrive about ten minutes after the gym doors open. Oliver and Gemma — he did figure out her name eventually — laughing about something. Evan, wearing a bright blue suit with a dark red tie that doesn’t remotely match. And Zoe, holding Evan’s hand, in a poofy white dress like it’s their fucking wedding. Cue the pipe organ.
oliver and gemma are from the movie, played by demarius copes and liz kate, respectively. they’re both hanging out with zoe pretty much every time they’re on screen. they’re in evan’s flashbacks during if i could tell her, walking into school in their band letter jackets, dancing at homecoming, and getting flowers after the spring jazz band concert.
though gemma and oliver are both in the band with zoe, we only see gemma playing her instrument — she’s a guitarist, like zoe, and plays with the band at the pep rally.
i had to pick an instrument for oliver with nothing to go on but “much smaller than a guitar,” based on their instrument cases. and demarius copes plays the trumpet, so that seemed like a good choice.
both demarius and liz have spoken about their respective characters in interviews. demarius on oliver:
Oliver is one of the high school students, good friends with Zoe Murphy, who is Evan’s love interest. He is queer, which is cool. We talk a lot about representation, and it’s really cool to be the one who is representing right now. I never see any high school Black, gay characters on TV who aren’t being ostracized for being Black, and I’m excited that I get to create that visual for somebody who is like me.
liz on gemma:
Gemma is way cooler than I’ll ever be. [laughs] She’s such a down-to-earth, caring friend. She’s a new character. She isn’t in the original Broadway musical. So, she’s something different than what fans have seen, but I don’t think they’ll be disappointed. She provides a lot more insight into the type of community Zoe (Kaitlyn Dever) is surrounded by. Gemma is her best friend. She provides a lot of insight there that was missing in the musical. The production did a great job providing more insight into the story of who these characters are.
sounds great! kind of a shame that they only got one line of dialogue between them — when The Letter spreads online and evan shows up at the bonfire (which i decided was a Performing Arts Bonfire, since zoe & gemma both attended and zoe brought her guitar) looking for zoe, gemma tells him “she went home.” that’s it!
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Last year’s production of Little Shop of Horrors would have been ruined by Mrs. Kinney’s insistence on a green spotlight, heedless of how corpse-like it made everyone look, but for Jared agreeing to use the spotlight and then not doing it.
mrs. kinney’s name comes from the novel, but she is not a character in the novel. val emmich’s section of the acknowledgements includes this list of names:
I received valuable personal and technical information from Christina Gagliardo, Sanford Kinney, Dan Coughlin, Justin and Megan Kiczek, my nieces and nephews (especially Samantha Baker and Gavin Caterina), and Mike Emmich.
the last name “kiczek” does get used in the novel for evan’s ap english teacher, mrs. kiczek. so i figured another surname from this section would be a good choice for another teacher.
The next morning, in AP English, as Mrs. Kiczek is rattling off the images, characters, and themes she wants us to look out for in “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” an announcement comes over the loudspeaker. Everyone, all at once, turns and looks at me.
(side note: “ap english” is a rather vague term when AP English Language and Composition and AP English Literature and Composition are both ap classes. i took both in high school and didn’t call either of them ap english. but i’m nitpicking the same author who didn’t realize a nurse and a nurse’s aide are different things.)
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He does recognize Josh and Cherise once he gets close enough to see their faces and read their KING and QUEEN sashes. They’re two of the few people who still come to Connor Project meetings, so they know him well enough to say hello, and nothing else. He learns, from Alana talking at them while they smile and agree, that they both play varsity soccer, which he’d never have guessed from years of pep rallies painting the homecoming court as the exclusive domain of football players and cheerleaders. Josh shoots him a couple looks, with a glance or two at Isabelle, that might translate to how do you have a date when you don’t even play a sport? or a slightly more insightful why are you here with a girl when you’re gay?, but Alana’s keeping him too busy to ask anything aloud.
Jared figures they’ll get back to dancing once Alana’s done reestablishing the constitutional monarchy. They don’t. Instead, Alana roams the gym greeting people from every clique and club imaginable, like she’s the queen and this is her royal tour, and Jared follows Isabelle follows Naomi follows Alana in a sad little conga line. First it’s Leila, head cheerleader and homecoming queen runner-up, and her squadron of soccer players — her boyfriend Rhys, Rhys’ douchebag friend Skye, and Skye’s date Maggie.
josh, cherise, leila, rhys, and skye are all from the movie, played by gerald caesar, hadiya eshé, zoey luna, isaac powell, and marvin leon, respectively. they collectively fill a “jock” / “popular kid” role in the student body. (and “bully”, at times.)
on the first day of school, josh, rhys, and skye (left to right) are up in the top row of the bleachers at the pep rally. they’re sitting behind connor, and in this shot skye has just tapped connor on the shoulder and is pretending he didn’t do it.
cherise is sitting with alana at the front of the assembly. why? unclear. what’s that medal for? also unclear.
leila was probably with the other cheerleaders at the pep rally, but the first clear shot of her is when she’s walking down the hall with skye, rhys, and josh afterward. leila and rhys are meant to be a couple, as the screenplay has them holding hands in this moment (though they don’t actually do it here).
this shot also gives us the only dialogue that these four get, not counting one-off lines in you will be found:
SKYE: Connor, I’m loving this manicure. Very school shooter chic.
Leila gasps, swats Skye with a pom-pom, as Rhys laughs.
RHYS: You’re such an idiot.
JOSH (Laughs): Oh my God.
LEILA: That is so messed up.
finally the five are all together at lunch that day and taking a selfie.
cherise is in the library computer lab at the same time as evan.
he then gets in line for the printer behind her, giving us her only dialogue:
EVAN: Sorry, um, I think I accidentally printed something.
CHERISE: Yeah, we’re all waiting.
liz kate shared a story about how she’d originally auditioned for cherise. questionable whether any of this characterization is in the movie.
It was a really fun audition, actually, ‘cause Cherise originally was written to be very, like, off-putting, and just, kind of a little bit rude, but like, not? And so she was, she was really fun to play because she had this, like, sarcastic demeanor about her, and, uh, it was just, it was really fun to audition for that. […] Anyway, so yeah, I, uh, originally auditioned for that, and in the middle of my audition for my director’s callback, Stephen [Chbosky] was like “Mm, no. I want you to audition for Gemma. You’re too nice for Cherise.”
on the day that connor’s death becomes public, cherise and josh are in the background looking couple-y as jared and evan get off the bus.
leila and cherise are at lunch together when the news breaks.
when evan is trying to decide what to say to the murphys at dinner, he sees josh, skye, and rhys standing around connor’s locker, looking solemn. rhys then takes a selfie of the three of them with the locker.
at the memorial service for connor, leila, rhys, cherise, josh, and skye all sit together. (all three guys are helpfully wearing letterman jackets with soccer ball patches to tell us what sport they play, if rhys carrying around a soccer ball on the first day of school wasn’t clear enough.) skye gets out his phone to film evan when the speech starts going off the rails, and leila & cherise both look at him with disgust; when the song gets going, skye puts his phone down.
if you’re thinking “wow, skye seems like a real asshole even compared to his other friends,” i totally agree, which is why i gave him this cameo in chapter 1:
The bathroom door bangs open. One of the jocks — a redhead asshole whose name is, if Jared remembers correctly, ridiculous — stomps in and posts up at a urinal. Evan and Jared exchange a look and head for the door.
during you will be found, we get a bunch of individual shots of them during the Student Body Being Inspired By Videos Of Evan’s Speech montage, with cherise in her bedroom, rhys in the school gym, josh in his car, and leila briefly in a video of her own. (shockingly, skye does not appear.) relevant to that scene, set decorator lance totten gave us some of the only concrete information about cherise, or any of these kids:
Musical montage…We decided to make Cherise a “cool girl” with skateboards and some funky artwork.
cherise, skye, josh, rhys, and leila all show up to the first connor project meeting, though skye isn’t clapping and appears to be on his phone, because of course he is. also, cherise’s letterman jacket here is the only evidence i have that she also plays soccer (or any sport, since this angle doesn’t let us check the other shoulder for a soccer ball patch).
the movie doesn’t show us anyone at homecoming other than zoe and evan, but gerald caesar posted a behind-the-scenes photo (which has since been deleted, but i grabbed the picture years ago) of himself and hadiya eshé in costume at homecoming, complete with crowns and HOMECOMING KING / HOMECOMING QUEEN sashes.
meanwhile, josh and cherise are still showing up to connor project meetings during only us, but the others aren’t.
maggie is the odd character out here who comes from the novel. she appears once in the first few days of school, when evan is in gym class.
Today is our physical fitness assessment. We take the test once at the beginning of every year and once at the end. Probably my two least favorite days of school.
Ms. Bortel has us in a row on the basketball baseline. Maggie Wendell, the captain of the girls’ varsity soccer team, models each exercise as Ms. Bortel delivers instructions.
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Then Matt, from Model UN, who vaguely compliments this year’s theme of A Night Under The Stars and maybe-jokingly threatens to hit Jared over the head with his research binder if his position paper isn’t ready by next weekend. Dana from the debate club greets both Alana and Naomi with hugs, Sabrina from the Student Environmental Alliance ignores everyone but Alana, Troy from intramural badminton is unreasonably jacked for someone who plays intramural badminton, Chriz with a Z from the yearbook committee insists on taking pictures of everyone, and Bailey from the LGBTQ+ Awareness Group is just thrilled about getting to wear a suit.
matt, dana, and sabrina are all from the stage show! alana mentions dana when checking in on evan:
ALANA: I mean, anybody else in your position would be falling apart. Dana P. was crying so hard at lunch yesterday, she pulled a muscle in her face. She had to go to the hospital.
EVAN: Isn’t Dana P. new this year? She didn’t even know Connor.
ALANA: That’s why she was crying. Because now she’ll never get the chance.
jared mentions matt and sabrina as other people making money off of connor’s death:
JARED: I’m not the only one. Haven’t you seen the wristbands with Connor’s initials on them that Sabrina Patel started selling during free period? Or the T-shirts Matt Holtzer’s mom made?
sabrina patel has also come up a couple times in quasi-canon material. in alana beck’s video resume, alana (played by phoenix best) says that she “spent [her] summer volunteering in botswana with [her] friend sabrina patel” (not acquaintance!), and sabrina is cited as saying “she’s very nice” about alana. olivia puckett, who understudied zoe and alana in the original broadway cast, had a running joke that she played sabrina, to the point of hijacking one of will roland’s backstage vlogs in character as sabrina. in the vlog, she says that “alana really wanted to do [the vlog] but i’m doing it” and tells kristolyn lloyd (in costume) “alana! love your sweater!” so naturally i decided that she has a crush on alana and is too jealous to talk to naomi, isabelle, or jared.
troy is from the novel, but doesn’t appear on the page. evan thinks of him when he’s meeting with the murphys in the principal’s office without knowing why:
Who are these people? They look a little gloomy for college reps. Not that I have any clue what a college rep actually looks like. It’s just, I heard Troy Montgomery, the star of our football team, had a few college reps come to our school to speak with him. He’s an athlete, though, and apparently a very talented one, and I’m just a kid who placed third in a second-rate short-story contest once. So who are these people and what do they want with me?
intramural badminton comes from the movie (see poster on the wall below, to the right of the double doors) and troy is unreasonably jacked for intramural badminton because he’s a star football player!
chriz with a z comes from the movie, sort of, and was one of the very last characters i added. the video of evan and zoe at homecoming was posted by instagram user chrizc91. without an existing character to tie that to, “chriz” was the easiest way to translate that to someone’s name, and being on the yearbook committee explained chriz taking pictures and videos of anyone and everyone.
bailey is the name i gave to a background character in the movie who does not have an official name or even a listing in the credits, but who appears repeatedly, often sitting at the table under the LGBTQ+ Awareness banner in the hall, like here, on the first day of school.
in the cafeteria when the news of connor’s death breaks, on the left.
in the hall as evan and jared are planning to write the emails, back at the LGBTQ+ Awareness table.
at the bonfire where zoe is hanging out when The Letter leaks.
and back at the table in the hallway during a little closer, even though the sign on the wall is now about joining the mathletes.
(side note: lance totten’s photo of this spot in the hallway shows the rainbow flag saying LGBTQ+ AWARENESS MONTH, with “month” on the green stripe, which is clearly absent in the movie. did that get edited out? painted over? was the flag taken down under the assumption that it would be irrelevant when LGBTQ+ Awareness Month ended, prior to the decision to take out “month”?)
without an actor’s name to look up or a screenplay to refer to, it’s hard to know what the creative team intended for this character, but from context clues i’d guess they had Some Kind Of Gender Or Sexuality in mind. i chose the name bailey and the descriptor of “thrilled about getting to wear a suit” to try and capture all the likely possibilities without committing to any particular pronouns or other specifics.
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“Yeah, when you haven’t completely abandoned us,” Kayla says. “Rehearsal is such a mess right now, Vanessa and Mrs. Kinney were arguing for like ten minutes yesterday over whether the muffin scene should use regular muffins or English muffins.”
“Vanessa isn’t even in that scene,” Freddie adds.
vanessa is from the novel, appearing on the first day of school shortly after kayla and freddie:
Vanessa Wilton is talking on the phone, probably to her agent. (She’s been in local commercials.)
if she’s enough of An Actress to appear in local commercials, she could absolutely be the self-appointed queen bee of the high school drama club. she’s playing lady bracknell, of course.
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“Isn’t that how lesbians do it? You date all your friends, you stay friends with all your exes, and eventually you hate each other so much that you all go to group therapy together.”
“Says who?”
“Some essay we read in English last year.” It was in the textbook, anyway, even if Mrs. Newcomb skipped over that chapter.
mrs. newcomb is the name i’ve given to evan’s english teacher from eleventh grade, who is mentioned (but never named) in every iteration of canon as having told heidi that evan wrote one of the best papers she’d ever read about sula (as i’ve discussed before). i’ve also mentioned her in a couple of my kleinsen prompt fics (example #1, example #2). the name “newcomb” is taken, with modification, from the name of one of my english teachers; ironically, i can’t remember that teacher’s actual name anymore, and an hour of googling the school’s name and names similar to “newcomb” turned up nothing.
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“Oh, yeah.” They’d both been town members in Fiddler, back when Jared preferred acting to tech and Evan was willing to get on a stage. The day they blocked the wedding scene, the drama teacher, Mrs. Morise, had condescendingly explained that they’d have to pair off into boy-girl couples for the dance sequence, “no matter how worried you might be about cooties,” as if they were six-year-olds rather than sixth graders.
the source of this anecdote is jared goldsmith’s suggestion that jared and evan were in fiddler on the roof together in middle school. as such, mrs. morise has no actual roots in canon; she was, however, loosely inspired by a different teacher i had and did not care for (and whose actual name i do still remember).
the newsies cast still being buddies a decade later brings me SO much joy
i dont look through their stories often anymore to but decided to yesterday and was so glad that i did
alex wong (OBC sniper), adam kaplan (2013- morris and jack u/s) and michael fatica (OBC swing/dance captain) going on tommy bracco (OBC/livesies spot)'s bachelor trip?? adorable. (also, tommy and joey having a 'bachbill' made?? iconic shit)
jack sippel (toursies mush, livesies darcy/kenny), kaitlyn frank (toursies kath u/s) and demarius copes (toursies henry) posting on their stories for josh burrage (toursies/livesies jojo)'s birthday? adorable
ben cook (livesies/toursies race) and iain young (livesies/toursies finch) being at josh burrage's birthday party? adorable (iain is in the back in the burgundy tee and ben is carrying the cake!)
One thing I’ve learned through my years of consuming live theatre and bootlegs of live theatre is that you can almost always tell when someone used to be a Newsie.
They always have this like indescribable quality about how they move even compared to other incredibly well trained dancers. I think it’s just because Newsies is such an insane, other level caliber of dance that it just brings them to another quality of movement.
I don’t know how to describe it. I just know that whenever I watch something the Newsie always stands out.
If I has a nickel for everytime the most iconic friendship in the newsies cast involved Jojo, Henry and at least one other guy, I would have two nickels. Which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice.
