Daveed Diggs
Image by Getty Images
By Talya Zax November 14, 2016
Meet ‘Hamilton’s’ Original Thomas Jefferson (and Marquis de Lafayette)
If you dig far enough back in Daveed Diggs’s Instagram feed, you’ll find a blurry picture of a framed white poster on a yellowing wall. The poster, filled with a dense list of names, is topped with a brief, triumphant title: “Hamilton.”
He took that photo just before the opening night performance of the musical that’s come to signal a distinctive, even revolutionary, moment in American culture. Diggs, 34, was part of the blockbuster from its off-Broadway start at the Public Theater, originating the roles of the Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson. (Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator of “Hamilton,” tapped Diggs for those roles after he joined Miranda’s hip-hop comedy group Freestyle Love Supreme.) The rapper and actor, who is the son of a white Jewish mother and black father from Oakland, won a 2016 Tony Award for his performance.
Diggs left “Hamilton” in July. Since his departure, he’s appeared in Baz Luhrmann’s Netflix series “The Get Down” and ABC’s “Black-ish.” He’s also been announced as an executive producer for a forthcoming ABC show about a struggling rapper who unexpectedly wins a mayoral election. In further hyper-busyness, Diggs has played a new character — one of Mr. Noodle’s brothers — for HBO’s relaunch of “Sesame Street” next year, released “Splendor and Misery,” the second full-length album of his noise-rap collective, and wrapped up the second iteration of #BARS, a workshop on hip-hop and theater he co-created at the Public Theater.
In a now-familiar “Hamilton” refrain, characters insist they’re “not throwing away” their shot. Diggs, it seems, is living up to the ambition of the musical that made him famous.
