Okieriete Onaodowan, the “Hamilton” star known to his Twitter followers as The Incredible Oak, announced his decision to leave the Broadway musical earlier this month. “Christmas Eve will be my last show,” he confessed during an interview on AOL Build, no doubt crushing the dreams of those who’ve yet to see the musical with its original cast. (At least we still have Peggy.)
But before Onaodowan says goodbye to his two “Hamilton” characters ― the bombastic tailor-turned-spy Hercules Mulligan and the quietly influential former president James Madison ― he and the nation have to come to terms with the election of Donald Trump.
As the son of Nigerian immigrants, Onaodowan has recently become an advocate for voting rights. Back when he was at the White House with Lin-Manuel Miranda and company last March, he urged first-time voters to prepare themselves for the polls. On Tuesday, Nov. 8, he implored Americans to “be the change” after posting a video casting his own ballot.
Onaodowan spoke with The Huffington Post after his Build interview, just one day before America voted. On that particular Monday, we asked Onaodowan whether or not he, a first-time voter at age 29, had hope for the outcome of the 2016 election.
”I am very hopeful,” he told HuffPost. “I can’t say that I confidently believe that a certain male candidate won’t win. That’s something that could very well happen. But all I can do is vote. That’s the only thing I have control over. It’s the only thing that I can do.”
Onaodowan, like many anxious Americans who remained unconvinced by overwhelmingly pro– Hillary Clinton polls, felt as though the rhetoric of the 2016 election wasn’t really new. “For years, this country has had an issue with immigrants,” he told HuffPost. “My mother would tell me stories when she was a nurse ― she has an African accent, she’s from Nigeria ― and she’s literally treating people and they’re yelling, ‘You don’t belong here. Go back to where you came from.’ [...] So what’s happening here has always been present for someone who’s an immigrant.”
“Because we sound different and talk different we don’t belong,” he added. “Even though this country is built on the backs of immigrants. And slaves. That’s the reason we’re here.”
Back in September, Onaodowan gave the keynote address to a crowd of new citizens being naturalized in New York City. “It was probably one of the greatest things,” he recalled, rethreading some of that hope he mentioned earlier. “In spite of all the things that are happening in the country right now, people are still dying to get here. They are seeing the news. They are seeing what’s happening. And that’s a testament to this country ― that people are dying and fighting to be here.”
Much of the cast of “Hamilton,” perhaps the most talked-about aspect of pop culture in 2015 and 2016 ― itself a musical that celebrates the role of immigrants in our country’s early history ― has been vocal about its collective stance against intolerance and exclusivity in America. Creator Miranda, along with actors Daveed Diggs, Javier Muñoz, Renée Elise Goldsberry and others, have stood up in the moments before and after the election, taking advantage of the “Hamilton” platform they’ve helped build. Onaodowan plans to use his newly amplified voice come Dec. 25 to work not only on his writing ― he is a poet, after all ― but to dip his toes in documentary filmmaking, too.
“I’d like to use my platform to instill the kind of change that I’d like to see in the world. I have more people listening to me than were listening to me a couple of years ago. So what can I say to those people? I do want to make a documentary and I’ve never done that before. I want to dive in headfirst and find the people and friends who do know how to make documentaries and make this vision come true.”
Onaodowan will not, unfortunately, be taking part in the upcoming “Frozen” musical. Although he played Kristoff in a lab reading of the production earlier this year, Onaodowan told HuffPost that the musical team ultimately decided to go in a different direction. “I was hoping they would move forward in the way they were, and the way that ‘Hamilton’ is set in terms of casting, as far as people of color in roles that you normally wouldn’t see them in,” he said. “Breaking that barrier down. But I’ve found out recently that they’ve gone back and they’ve cast not a person of color.”
“Hamilton” certainly set a precedent on Broadway when it actively chose to cast actors of color as historically white characters. The musical’s runaway success has led critics to wonder whether or not theater as a whole will be headed in a more inclusive direction as a result.
“I have no idea. I really don’t know,” Onaodowan replied when we asked him about Broadway’s diverse, or not-so-diverse, future. “This business is kind of crazy [...] ‘Hamilton’ could just be the one thing and we go back to the way things were. Or it could open the floodgates. But I don’t know. This show is such an anomaly in so many ways that it could just be that.”
Thankfully, “Hamilton” ticket-hunters have over a month to catch Onaodowan onstage. Whether he’s near-growling at the audience as enigmatic Mulligan or modestly musing over the Federalist Papers as Madison, viewers can catch glimpses of the various aspects of Onaodowan’s personality there. “They both have different aspects of who I am,” he admitted. “Every character you play... you take an aspect of your personality, isolate it, and you blow it up. [Both are] a version of me that is very true.”
“But honestly, I’m leaning more toward Madison,” he added. “Because he’s kind of soft-spoken and how I am naturally. I don’t run around going ‘ahhhh’ all the time!”
His parting words, an affirmation that now reads both as advice to himself post-”Hamilton” and to the population of Americans reeling in uncertain times, place him firmly in the Madison camp:
Empathy is work. Being caring takes work. Being kind takes work. Wanting to help people, it’s work. There are some people who wake up and are like, it’s all I want to do! But for other people, it’s work. I want to put that message out ― that it’s worth putting the work into. It’s going to be annoying and it’s going to be uncomfortable and you’re probably not going to want to do it. But please, please find a way to do it.
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