In the year since, he’s been auditioning and taking meetings for “dream roles” in film and TV.
“It’s like existing in a parallel universe,” he recalled of a trip to Los Angeles just before Hamilton’s Broadway debut. “I would park in places that I had parked a million times and go into buildings I had maybe done auditions in in the tiny room in the front, and as soon as I walked in someone at the desk is like, ‘Daveed Diggs! So excited you’re here. Would you like some water?’ ”
That the stars aligned for Hamilton, he says, was a magical “accident.” Diggs, a friend of Miranda and Hamilton director Thomas Kail from the rap group Freestyle Love Supreme, came to mind for the roles of Lafayette/Hamilton since the show’s early stages. “Who has the charisma? Who’s a better rapper than Hamilton? Oh, it’s Daveed,” Kail told Charlie Rose. “He has a relationship with the audience, which is chemical. He walks on the stage and they stop looking at anything else but him.”
For Diggs, Jefferson is a less ambiguous figure in real life. “He’s a piece of shit,” Diggs says bluntly, as we stroll by Thomas Jefferson Pool, across the street from the public Thomas Jefferson Houses. “The more I read about him, the more I imagine that his views on slavery were, potentially, more conflicted than we like to give him credit for …” He trails off. “He didn’t act on it, so it doesn’t matter.”
Stepping out of his rap wheelhouse to sing that song still terrifies Diggs on a nightly basis. “Jefferson’s not afraid of anything,” he says. “Daveed Diggs is a very nervous person.” (x)