Charlie leslie odom junior is here. What brought you to hamilton . I was invited into hamilton. Sometimes you find the best jobs in this business, you did not audition for, you have no idea how you got there. I asked tommy last week. I have this superstition if i get a straight offer, i do not want to ask how it came about. I am afraid they might realize, why did we asked this guy . I got invited two years ago to do a reading of the show. I had seen it at faster. About half anm do hour of the show. I had seen them do it at vassar. I had seen maybe 45 minutes and was blown away. When i was invited to do the reading, i prepared like id never had before. I came in and new all my music. And knew all my music. I knew what they were working on. It had powerful potential. I knew how it affected me. Lynn is only one year older than i am, this is our music. I recognize the rhythms and the syncopation, and the pulse of the piece. Charlie people wondered when hiphop would come to broadway, because rock had come to broadway. So influential with that as well, the heights being a watershed moment for hiphop music and latin american actors. I listened to the heights, i have chills thinking about it. I told them that there is something from the first moments of that album [singing] the need to communicate is something that has always moved me greatly. I saw a show when i was a teenager called, death poetry jam. Pen. E is blood in the they put something on the paper and there is an urgency and a fire in their belly to get it. It came full circle when i was listening to a rehearsal, listening back and learning my part. I said, we sound like that. I can hear that need and what we are doing. Charlie i hear all of the desire, energy, preparation, to do justice to the text that you are given. How much of it was important to know aaron burr . You not only play a character. You play the narrator. You were there at every moment. Role, butas a larger burr is also the continuity. Leslie one of my favorite gifts sometimes fanse give us books of articles they , find on ebay. Steve and Rhonda Hawthorne have given me more than anybody. They come by with these articles they have ordered these books , that they have ordered. Those have helped me a lot because i would not call myself a historian by any means. Lynn has read enough about all of the events that he has been able to come up with his own opinion on the events. I think that is what makes the historian. You read one book and you have one opinion. I have read enough on burr now to come up with my own theories. Charlie there are other opinions of ehrenberg, of aaron burr, some good, some bad. Leslie at the end of the day, i i have to play with what lynn wrote. Charlie you have to play into what you have experienced. Leslie and what i believe as far as what my job is as a performer. That is another one of those things that this has intersected. It has come at the point that i am ready there is a certain amount of vulnerability that the show requires that i was not ready to embrace at any other moment in my life. There is a certain amount of honesty that if i am doing my job right, i bring to the stage every night. That is that comes up time. Charlie earlier we talked to the writer, composer, and star of hamilton, and also with the director, thomas cale. Here is a look at that conversation. You sit in a room for six years making something, and you have the dream version of how the show will be received. We are experiencing that. I started writing this in 2008 while i was still in my show, in the heights. I was on my vacation when i picked up rons book at borders charlie i will take this one. Lin i knew he died in a dual, so i knew it would have a banging ending. The dickensian nature of hamiltons life charlie explain that. Lin hamilton was born out of wedlock possibly. His father split by the time he was 10 years old. His mother died in bed with him a few short years later. His brother was an apprentice to a blacksmith, so he was by himself. He was sent to live with a cousin after his mothers death, and then the cousin killed himself. Then he got put in charge of a trading charter. He was a clerk for a Trading Company that traded rum and slaves. He wrote his way off of the island. Hade was a hurricane that ravaged st. Croix, and he wrote a home about it, describing the carnage saying he saw fights , that would strike astonishment into angels. People took up a fund to get him an education in new york. Charlie here we have a character, a great american. We know there is drama. He may have not fired his gun in the dual. Here we have that story. You have translated it into so much more. Tell me about the ideas you want to pour into this to make it a new look at the founding fathers, the american experience, and a different way of presenting it that would appeal to young people, because you have young actors. You speak to what we were conscious of. How do we eliminate distance between our story and now. We knew that this is a country that was founded and created by immigrants. Somebody in all of our lines stepped off of a boat. They put their foot down on this soil and went to work. As we started thinking about taking the inspiration from rons book, we thought here are a lot of events but we have to , tell a story. We had all of the events laid out, we made a book and compared timelines. You have those things to build around. It came apparent so early on as we were designing how the show could function, that this idea of doubling characters for instance, took off. The character who played lafayette they have this relationship to france. One antagonistic and one supportive. How can we make the audience feel like who they are and what they understand is actually not so different from what the people struggled with. Charlie hiphop seems like a genius stroke now, but that is what you knew. I checked a versions of the book and i felt like someone had done a hiphop version. This was someone who wrote his way out of circumstances. That is the hiphop narrative from the south bronx in the 1970s until today. I googled hamiltonhiphop musical, it was not there. That was the first thing that jumped out at me. This is a fundamental hiphop story. Charlie the lyrics go, i am just like my country, young, scrappy, and hungry, i am not throwing away my shot. Wrapping ose is rapping. I hope we were rolling on that. Were always rolling on everything. You performed that at the white house. I performed the opening number. Charlie before we see that, is that what the president responded to when he said geithner should see this . I told the audience this was the first time performing this in public. They asked me to perform something from in the heights. They allowed me to close out the show with that. His response was, somebody has to get geithner in here. Charlie did he think of him as hamilton . Lin he had a quote at that time because the economic crisis had just blown up. He said geithner had the hardest job as treasury secretary since Alexander Hamilton. I think that was his quote on has ahead of him. This was early in obamas administration. They were just figuring out how to do this. How to get us out of the whole. How to get us out of the hole. He also performed it from burrs point of you. They got a laugh. Charlie where was that idea come from . Aaron burrs perspective . I look at musical history, we have a great tradition of Andrew Lloyd Webber of the antagonist in the story. That was immediately where i went. That set up the difficult task of figuring out who it aaron burr is. Who is, as we say in the show is , known as the villain. Charlie but you think more of him. I do. Gore wrote a historical fiction novel. Is aaron burr is a lot craftier than mine, but one of the things i learned about burr is he is an early feminist. He was very close with his wife and daughter. His daughter received an education better than any man. He was on the society with Alexander Hamilton for the abolition of slaves. There are redeeming characteristics to this guy. I had to find my way in because every biography is defensive or vilifies him. Charlie they were different in the following way, would you know better than everybody. On one hand aaron burr was cautious, careful, laidback. Alexander hamilton wanted to charge forward. At every moment. Yes. Hamilton left behind 27 volumes of written work. Aaron burr left behind less than two. The tragedy of the show is, at the moment when burr is reckless and lets go, and hamilton is cautious and throws away his shot, one kills the other. That is how they are remembered forever. Lets make a story about two people who were very dear and complex friends, and one of them kills his friend. They were soldiers, lawyers, statesmen together. You thought about . Ing aaron burr because he gets all of the best songs. Now you watch the show and cannot imagine me playing him. He gets these wonderful moments, one of my favorite being where he talks about not being in power and seeing hamilton trade away the capital. He says how am i not in this , room . Charlie take a look at this, this is you in the white house in 2009. Son, grow up to be a hero and a scholar. The 10 founding father without a father got a lot farther by working a lot harder, by being a lot smarter, by being a selfstarter by 14 they placed him in charge of the trade and charter he was carted away he is expected to be a part of the brother then a hurricane came and devastation reigned the future dripped down the drain he wrote this for free he wrote this first refrain, a testament to his brain word got around and they said this kid is insane lets send him to the mainland, get your education the world will know your name what is your name . Alexander hamilton his name is Alexander Hamilton there are a million things he has not done, just you wait when he was 10, his father split alex and his mother were bedridden alex got better but his mother he moved in with his cousin, the cousin committed suicide alex started reading and retreating what is there left to do . He would have been destitute without a sense of restitution he started working, clerking for his late mothers landlord he got his hands on every book he could he now stands on the bow of the ship headed for a new land in new york you can be a new man the ship is in the harbor, can you spot him . Another immigrant coming up the bottom me . Fulfool that shot him charlie unbelievable. It is almost like if they did not have hiphop that had to be created for this. Thank you. That means a lot. The score is both a love letter to hiphop and musical theater. Youre right. It is this heightened language. We are learned early on, energy went out. We had this ball that we throw in the air so high at the top we have to keep it at that level. There are times when we take musical breaks and slow it down and and speed it up again, this heightened language seem to be the only way to convey the worldview. Charlie did you once say that hamilton reminded you of tupac . Yeah. In that he embodies so many contradictions. He is both thoughtful and boisterous, brilliant and selfdestructive. He would get into fights that in retrospect, why are you fighting with that guy . That is what i think when i think about tupacs life. That is what is so brilliant. I think hamilton carries that many contradictions with him. Charlie Eugene Oneill is one of the greatest playwrights of the 20th century. He is the only american founder to have won the nobel prize for literature. He has been called the father of american theater, paving the way for arthur miller. The iceman cometh is one of his most powerful plays. Joining me now, two tony winning actors, nathan lanes and brian dennehy, i am pleased to have them at the table. Welcome. Nathan thank you. Charlie there is a story i read, you saw this production was take place, and you said this is right for me. You notified the director . Nathan yes, it started with ken branagh and a bar. He said you have to do these great parts. Charlie ive never thought of that. Nathan he said if you do, you will learn a great deal and it will be lifechanging, it does not matter what anyone says. I read an interview 10 years later with brian and bob falls, and they were discussing potentially revisiting the iceman. They had done it in 1990 together. Is there an oneill character that brian has not played . Nathan i think he did. When i heard them discussing brian taking on the role of larry, i wrote an email to bob falls, even though i did not know him that well, saying i would love to play hickey. Here is my reasoning, and fortunately he responded , positively. We got together and discussed how we could do it. Charlie how do you see him . Nathan when i read the play as a kid, i got a collection of Eugene Oneill plays, i read the iceman cometh, i was drawn to the character of hickey. Because of the description that only a writes that sounded a little like me. He describes him as short and rolypoly with a button nose and a twinkle in his eye. He always writes these long descriptions of characters, rather too specific for everyone to live up to. What he created i thought and , what i was bringing up to bob in my email was it is defined by Jason Robards. He was the gold standard. In 1956, when they did the revival offbroadway, they defined to that character is. Than saymuch darker the original production in 1946. Mischievoust this malevolence and otherworldly quality to it. I was saying to bob, wouldnt it be interesting, taking what oneill has said about him, the notion is he loves these guys. Just as he ultimately says he killed his wife and said it was heact of mercy out of love, has come to help them, change their lives, and bring them peace. Unfortunately he feels the only way to do that is for them to kill their illusions, their pipedreams as they are so often called. I thought, it has to come out of that. It has to come out of love. Not that he is trying to destroy them, but he is trying to help them. In a way that is more disturbing. And the fact that it is a joyous thing when he arrives. It is so offputting that this person they love is driving them to do this thing. For him he is in a kind of , semidelusional state. He feels this last act that does i dont think bring him absolution, but it is a way to prove to them and himself that what he did was right. Ultimately his pipe dream is , that he did this out of love. Charlie he is doing it for them. Is this a different hickey . Brian oh, yeah. Every great role its interesting, when i started working all i knew was Jason Robards along with everyone else. When we started rehearsal along time ago, almost 30 years ago, i said i will just steal Jason Robards character. It was not so easy to do. Finally i realized after a few , weeks of coming up with bad Jason Robardss interpretations, i said i cannot do this. I came up with the happiest guy in the world. This sunny salesman of death. Big smiles all of the time, big hearty laugh, slowly it becomes obvious that this guy is selling something that is not quite as advertised. Charlie is he selling it out of love . Brian sure. He there is an interesting discussion that goes on constantly with people like ourselves who deal with this play and these characters just , how crazy is he . Is he crazy enough to know exactly what he is doing, in terms of embracing his craziness . Or is he not crazy . He sort of compartmentalizes all of these things. He knows he has to turn themselves in. He knows hes going to have to call the police. He knows that what he did was wrong, technically. Shooting your wife in the back of the head, that is technically wrong. He knows he must be punished, ultimately that is what he really wants. He wants to be punished. That is what he always wanted from his wife, but she wouldnt. She kept forgiving him. It is this unhealthy codependent relationship, but he does love her. That is one theme, a man cannot. Ive without his illusions another theme, how does love and hate coexist . Brian the only way he can stop her from forgiving him is to make sure she is dead. Otherwise she would forgive him. Poll the trigger. I forgive you. Nathan it is an unraveling. In the fourth act when he famously recounts in order to prove to the group that he was right he recounts his life story. Leading up to the night of the murder, as he is going along, he was not planning on telling the story, but then he has to. He is driven to do it. To prove to them. These revelations start happening. It is like a therapy session. Someone says, tell me your life story. And you start, you start to talk about things you did not expect to talk about. It takes you someplace else. And you think, maybe i was wrong about this or that. As he slowly starts to unravel as he is revealing more and more about his own self loathing and the shame about what he did , to her. I think in a way, he finally convinced himself that was the answer. It is like a story you would read in the new york post, and you would say, you believe this happened . And yet it did. Because we are human. Charlie has doing this done all of the things that ken branagh said it would do . Nathan without a doubt. It was prophetic. Charlie that was 10 years ago. Nathan yes, it took a while to get me to chicago. I instigated the whole thing. Fortunately, it was a huge success in chicago, which led to this venuet at the beautiful harvey theater. , this Extraordinary Company of actors that charles discussed. It is a Remarkable Group of people. I think that is what is also making it so special. Yes it has lived up to those , expectations, and more. It has changed me as an actor. Who wouldnt . I know there are certain look, anyone in show business, there are certain preconceptions about them. We think we know them because of two or three things they did that were successful. Thats the person i know. I felt at my age, i needed i had more to offer, and wanted to challenge myself. I certainly wanted to do it with bob and brian. I knew that was the way to do it. Charlie here is what bob says about you. It is remarkable that brian sort of moved through these oneill roles. He knew he was the right age for slade. Brian he is referring to the british system. The brits turn start out you playing a young man part, then move up and play the same thing over and over again. I guess that is true. I feel comfortable with larry. Especially since he sits on his throughout the whole play. It is an interesting, complicated part. In many ways it is as complicated if not more so than , hickey. Although hickey has all the hard lifting to do, larry has some stuff to work out, especially with the kid. It is a similar situation, a parallel track, except in larrys case he finds out that the real generous thing to do is to make sure that this kid kills himself, which he will assist him in doing. Were talking about oneill here. Whats really interesting about the darkness of it it was , written about the same time as he was writing the family play. That was apparently an ordeal f