Story of the Week: Leslie Odom Jr. Is Returning to Hamilton. Will More Original Cast Members Join Him?

This week we reported that Leslie Odom Jr. will return to the Richard Rodgers Theatre to play Aaron Burr, the role he originated in Hamilton. The musical opened on Broadway August 6, 2015, which makes this the 10^th anniversary year, or as composer Lin-Manuel Miranda has dubbed it #Hamilten.

Story of the Week will look back at the cultural significance of Hamilton and entertain a tantalizing question: Is Leslie Odom Jr. the first of several original cast members to announce their return? But first, to put things in context…

What is Hamilton and why is it such a big deal?

In 2008, Lin-Manuel Miranda picked up Ron Chernow’s biography of America’s first treasury secretary to read while on vacation from his debut Broadway musical, In the Heights. That spark of inspiration begat The Hamilton Mixtape, a new bio-musical about the American revolutionary that burst into the public eye when Miranda offered a sneak peek at the White House in 2009. Miranda gave us another glimpse in 2012 at Lincoln Center’s American Songbook. The Hamilton Mixtape appeared as a workshop production at Vassar College in the summer of 2013 under the direction of Thomas Kail. The following year, the shortened title Hamilton was announced as part of the 2014-15 season at the Public Theater. And that’s when it really took off.

Positive word of mouth created intense demand during previews, making Hamilton the must-have ticket in New York. The off-Broadway run extended several times ahead of its press opening, prompting speculation that producer Jeffrey Seller might try to make the leap to Broadway before the 2015 Tony Awards cutoff in order to ride the wave of momentum to a Best Musical trophy. But that didn’t happen. Hamilton concluded its run at the Public on May 3. In June, it became the first off-Broadway musical since Little Shop of Horrors to win the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Musical. And on July 13 it began previews at the Richard Rodgers Theatre on Broadway—11 months before the next Tony Awards would be announced. Seller correctly discerned that Hamilton was no flash in the pan, and he could afford to wait for it.

Every season has its hits, but Hamilton is the last Broadway musical to truly pierce the national consciousness, making it a cultural reference on par with major films and television series. That’s something increasingly difficult to pull off in a century when Broadway has become more of an elite pursuit.

It handily won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Musical. The show has spawned legions of fans worldwide through multiple ongoing tours and the excellent film capture that has streamed on Disney+ since 2020. The Broadway production grossed $1,953,273.00 last week and consistently hovers around the $2 million mark, making it one of the top earners on Broadway in the past decade. And what a decade it has been.

What does Hamilton mean in the time of President Donald Trump?

In my review of the Broadway run, I called Hamilton “a telegram of irrepressible optimism from the Obama era,” a notion that first lady Michelle Obama seemed to confirm when she called it, “the best piece of art in any form that I have ever seen in my life.” From its first public showing at the White House in 2009, Hamilton has been inextricably linked to Obama, like Camelot to Kennedy, and that feels correct.

Both the musical and former president exude a faith in the American experiment, that its values should be embraced by successive generations of Americans of all ethnic backgrounds, that peaceful deliberation can overcome all differences, and that the arc of history bends toward justice. This has obviously clashed with the reality of American democracy as most of us have experienced it over the last 10 years. In retrospect, we should have seen that awkward encounter with Mike Pence during a November 2016 curtain call as a harbinger of things to come.

I regularly think about the second act song “One Last Time,” which originally appeared off-Broadway as “One Last Ride” and depicted Washington and Hamilton riding out to Western Pennsylvania to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion, an insurgency of farmers and frontiersmen angered by Hamilton’s whiskey tax, the proceeds of which he used to pay down war debt and bolster the credit of his new national bank. These whiskey rebels were suspicious of high finance and centralized power on the east coast; essentially, they were the forebears of today’s Trump voters, whose conspicuous silence on the extraordinary exercise of presidential power over the last three months is well noted.

Still, this was the only acknowledgment of Trump’s America in Hamilton, and it was cut out of the script on the transfer to Broadway. Why? The revision certainly doesn’t make for a more exciting second act. Instead of crushing rebels, Washington and Hamilton now…write a speech. I have to suspect this is yet another reflection of Obama—specifically the tendency to overlook wounds that cannot be staunched with hopeful rhetoric, hoping that they will magically heal themselves.

But as in Hamilton’s day, the discontents of progress and cosmopolitanism will not be ignored, and they have made themselves heard by sending an arsonist back to the White House. Meanwhile, Seller has responded by canceling an upcoming engagement of Hamilton at the Kennedy Center, which is now run by a board of directors chaired by the president himself.

I haven’t seen Hamilton since 2016 and I wonder if it feels different in 2025, following a decade that has seen the #MeToo movement, the Black Lives Matter reckoning, a pandemic, and two successful Trump elections. Do the actors onstage have difficulty some nights conjuring the irrepressible optimism that constitutes my most enduring memory of the show? Is the audience as receptive to its cheery message? And if more original cast members join Odom for the decennial, how will their lived experience over the last 10 years impact the way they approach their roles?

Will other original cast members join Odom for the 10^th anniversary?

I’ve heard plenty of rumors, but I haven’t been able to corroborate any of them, so I won’t be repeating them here.

Still, it’s not an overstatement to say that Hamilton changed the lives of everyone involved. Miranda has become a household name, the go-to songwriter for Disney whose now one Oscar short of EGOT. Daveed Diggs, who made his Broadway debut as Lafayette/Jefferson, lent his voice to Zootopia (2016) and The Little Mermaid (2023).

Renée Elise Goldsberry, who originated the role of Angelica Schuyler, has starred in multiple television series and led the cast of the musical adaptation of The Tempest in Central Park. Phillipa Soo, who played her sister and Hamilton’s wife Eliza, is one of the most sought-after performers on Broadway, most recently playing Guenevere in the revival of Camelot. She’s also a regular on the ABC cruise ship medical series Doctor Odyssey. On May 19, Emmy Award winner Jasmine Cephas Jones (the original Peggy Schuyler) will join Soo and Goldsberry (as well as several other original cast members) for a special benefit concert at the Town Hall honoring Miranda. The Schuyler sisters reunite—but for just one evening?

Anthony Ramos, who played John Laurens/Philip Hamilton, starred in the film adaptation of Miranda’s In the Heights. Jonathan Groff, who played King George, won a Tony last season for the revival of Merrily We Roll Along and is about to open on Broadway in Just in Time. And ensemble member Ariana DeBose (credited as “the bullet”) won an Academy Award in 2022 for her portrayal of Anita in West Side Story and has hosted multiple Tony Awards broadcasts. Hamilton was a major boost to their careers, a show worth clearing some time in their busy schedules to revisit on its 10^th birthday.

Ten is a mystical number in the Hamilverse: Alexander Hamilton still graces the $10 bill (the musical likely played some role in scuttling an effort to replace him). And you can still use one of those banknotes to pay should you win the nightly Ham4Ham lottery, making it the most affordable ticket on Broadway. That makes this a particularly auspicious year for the musical, one that almost certainly has more exciting announcements in store. I cannot imagine that a showman who had the chutzpah to tease his very-much-still-in-development musical in front of the president of the United States would be satisfied with just one original cast member returning for its big anniversary.