Now that we’re practically BFFs, you know that when I like something, I throw myself into it 1,000 percent (as long as I can do it from my couch). I’ve got a predilection for addiction, in the form of handbags, coffee, and tweeting. A fondness for Fassbender, a hunger for hockey, and TV binges. But that’s small potatoes compared to the obsession that took over my life this past year.
I blame Josh Gad. Remember, Rosa and I had been exercising in his pool while he and his family were in Europe? One day, after they returned home from their vacay, Josh came out to the backyard to talk to us while we worked out. He was excited to tell us about their trip and about a musical he had just seen at The Public Theater in New York. His friend and Carnegie Mellon classmate Leslie Odom Jr. was one of the leads. He went on and on about how great the show was and how it wasn’t like anything he’d seen before and the guy who wrote it was a genius, blah, blah blah. I probably would’ve been more engaged if my glutes hadn’t been on fire from all the scissor kicks I was doing.
“I’m telling you,” he insisted, “it’s gonna change Broadway.”
I took this opportunity to take a break and started listening. I mean, Josh had been nominated for a Tony so he prolly knew WTF he was talking about. He was so insistent that I had to look into it. I’m not exactly a big Broadway-head but I had recently started hittin’ up shows whenever I traveled to New York City for work. Rosa had been a theater major in college so she generally steered me toward what was supposed to be hot on the Great White Way. So I texted my publicist, Tej, and asked her to look into tickets for my next work trip to Manhattan, not knowing at this early stage, even though it was still off-Broadway, it was easier to get Adele to perform at my godson’s bris.
She said sure and I didn’t think another thing about it. When the alert for my trip out to NYC popped up on my phone a week before travel, I texted Tej to see if she had secured tix. She had not. She said it was impossible. She’d been trying but was getting nowhere. I was like, “Word?” What is up with this show?
I googled it. Hamilton, created by and starring Lin-Manuel Miranda, was set to make its Broadway debut at the Richard Rogers Theatre in Times Square on August 6, 2015. Lin had already won a gang of awards for his groundbreaking 2008 Best Musical In the Heights and had been nominated for a Pulitzer. Apparently, he wasn’t done blowing people’s minds and his next undertaking was a brilliant musical extravaganza about the life of Alexander Hamilton and his fellow founding homies, all played by actors of color. It was a revolutionary collision of hip-hop and history. And, true to Josh Gad’s word, the show was being regaled as the next big thing to head to Broadway. I wanted to go there.
If I had been nonchalant about getting in to see this show before, I was a little more than curious now. Since it was moving to Broadway, I told Tej not to sweat it and I would just get tickets once it opened there. The theater would be bigger and the tickets abundant.1
My New York trip came and went and I saw The Audience with Helen Mirren. She was fantastic. The show was well done. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but I still wanted to see this Hamilton. I contacted my publicist again and told her to just get me tickets, any tickets, and I would get a flight to New York. It didn’t have to coincide with work obligations. She said she’d never experienced anything like this, but she wasn’t going to stop until she got me those tickets. I had consigned myself to the reality that I might never see this play when out of the blue, the Hamilton PR assistant got back to Tej. He had seen my name in Tej’s email request, was a big fan of Parks, and could rustle up four tickets for the final preview before the show opened if I wanted them. First of all, let’s talk about how:
1. I got the tickets to the show because I had been on Parks and Rec (another reason I’m grateful to Mike Schur) and …
2. he was giving me FOUR tickets! FOUR!
I was like, fuck yeah, I’ll take ’em! I knew Rosa was in, I just needed to find two more people who wanted to go, which was surprisingly difficult. The show had buzz but it was all inside-baseball kinda chatter in the theater community. I texted a guy I had a crush on and invited him.
Do you want to go see Hamilton? It’d be nice to see you.
Mind you, I’d been trying to hook up with this guy in New York ever since I’d met him six months before but he’d always flaked on me. He turned me down. He was a musician and he didn’t want to pay for show tickets. Mind you, these were house tickets, $176 each, a bargain since normal tickets were at minimum a grand for the seats I had—seventh row on the motherfucking aisle. I would have paid for him but I didn’t want him to get weird about it. Guys can get weird about money shit and since I was still hoping to get back in his pants at some point, I just said no worries and kept it movin’. I invited a friend from college who’s a New York actor but he was doing a show down in DC. I invited my lit agent who got me the deal to write this book you are reading and she wanted to go but didn’t think she should leave work, as it was a matinee performance. We couldn’t give these tickets away. We ended up taking Rosa’s brother Rico and her cousin Francesca. I was rolling deep with the Graziano clan.
On the big day, from the moment I got out of the hotel shower until we were in our seats, I’d been snapping and Instagramming. We were v. excited and I was at my social media finest.
The energy in the room was off the charts. Just before the lights went up for the opening,2 I started to panic. What if this shit didn’t live up to the hype? Cuz I’ve had that experience before with other overly hyped shows. I’d once sat through a performance of a Tony Award–winning musical thinking, “This is it? This is what everyone’s been losing their shit over?” I flew cross-country and got a hotel room to see THIS show and all I knew about it was that Josh had said it was gonna change Broadway. Plus, I wasn’t seeing Lin in the leading role of Alexander Hamilton. His understudy, Javier Muñoz, was performing that afternoon.
The lights went up, and Leslie, who played Aaron Burr, entered the stage with a question: “How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman, dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot in the Caribbean by providence impoverished in squalor, grow up to be a hero and a scholar?”
By the end of the opening number I was IN and by the time Jonathan Groff finished his first number as King George, I was fucking OBSESSED. He was so charming yet despicable and funny that every subsequent time he stepped onstage I started to giggle. By the middle of the second half, we were broken. Rosa and I. Bawling. Hamilton was heartbreaking. Hilarious. Mind-blowing. Life-giving. Beautiful beyond words. The story, dancing, the rapid-fire lyrics—Daveed Diggs, who played Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson, was killin’ Lin’s rhymes—filled my heart with joy, then smashed it to pieces.
After the show, the kid who got me the tickets, the cherub sent from on high, came up and introduced himself and took us onstage to meet the cast. That afternoon we met Daveed, Leslie, Okieriete “Oak” Onaodowan, and George Washington himself, Chris Jackson. They were all lovely and kind, and put up with my gushing as if it were the first time they’d heard the accolades. We hung around onstage for a bit, chatting and taking pictures with these gentlemen, when I saw Lin. All I could think was THIS is the guy. The mind behind what had made my heart soar for the past two hours and thirty minutes. He and some of the cast were sitting on the stage talking to a group of high school students about art and theater. I so wanted to meet him but I didn’t want to bother him and we had a dinner reservation. So I left. Well, my body left. My heart, my mind, and my soul stayed in that theater for the next twenty-four hours.
Rosa and I couldn’t stop talking about what we’d just seen. There was no cast album yet so we looked up clips online and recorded snippets for our Flipagram posts. Even Rico couldn’t stop raving about it. “Dude, it fucking changed our lives!” he said in that masculine, Italian-guy-from-Jersey way.
My life was never the same, either. The next day I tweeted my “review” of the show.
My review of @HamiltonMusical:
It was so so so so good. It made me so happy. I laughed I smiled I bawled. It was Out. Of. Control.
I wanna have Lin’s babies.
I want Javier by my side as a life partner.
I wanna collab w/Leslie and star with him in everything.
I wanna have dirty unabashed sex with Daveed.
I wanna hang with Oak at all things cool.
I wanna be best friends with Jonathan Groff and have him serve as my Maid of Honor.
I wanna live on that stage and have each and every one of them in my life forever and always.
If someone says do you want to go see Hamilton slap them in the face for asking such an asinine question because it is an insult to your sense of art culture and general #KnowingGoodShit-ness.
So. Fucking. Good.
If I don’t see it 4 more times it’s because I’ve died a sudden tragic death and in my last breath I whispered Go. See. Hamilton.
I was already a woman possessed but my brainwashing was complete when I received my first tweet back from Leslie. He wrote:
@unfoRETTAble We. Loved. Having. You. Thank you for the tweets. As funny as you are, people take you hella seriously. These will matter. x
Then—drum roll please—Lin responded.
@Lin_Manuel But how can I even thank @unfoRETTAble for her kindness? *names first born Lil’ Sebastian* YOU’RE 500 CANDLES IN THE WIND … #thankyou
@unfoRETTAble: @Lin_Manuel I loved it & cannot wait to come see U as A. Ham! And just an FYI I’m telling everyone ur my BFF. (U still my BBF @Rosagrazz.)
Sebastian is his son’s name and Li’l Sebastian is Pawnee’s famous mini-horse on Parks! Lin watched Parks, which I didn’t know, and then I realized he’d already been following me on Twitter!
@Lin_Manuel: @unfoRETTAble @Rosagrazz Retta. I was tweeting Buffy while YOU were tweeting Buffy & yours were so good I STOPPED to read yours. WE ARE BFFS.
That’s when I became obsessed with Lin because OMG he is the greatest pop-culture nerd/regular old nerd EVER. We ended up becoming pseudo-Twitter friends.3
I hearted my new friendship and all I could think about was getting back to New York to see Hamilton with Lin IN IT. That was my fucking goal. Every time I had to go back for work, I’d ask my publicist, “Can you try to get me tickets again?” At this point, I was also asking the kid who had hooked me up the first time. I was like a junkie lookin’ for a fix. I’m pretty sure he regretted giving me his email address. He was like, “Listen. Ima do what I can. Trust me when I say, it ain’t easy. Okay?”
Okay.
It was his way of saying get to the back of the line, Thirsty.
I got it, but I was not to be thwarted. While I waited, I could satiate myself with the cast album, which I’d preordered and which automatically downloaded upon release. I remember being in the pool again, this time at my place and by myself when I saw it pop up in my iMusic. While I was working out, I listened to it on my Bluetooth. It was as though the entire show was playing out in my head and I was reliving the whole thing again. “Satisfied.” “Helpless.” “The Room Where It Happens.” “Guns and Ships.”
Rosa texted me.
Rosa: Just walking the dog (
) listening to the soundtrack. Every line is quotable.
Me: oh my god. boo hooing in the pool right now!!!
Rosa: Lol. We r so same person. I mean every line (crying emoji)
Retta: I literally have a lump in my throat
Hearing Lin sing, all of that emotion. Reliving Leslie’s incomparable buttery voice. And the women. THE WOMEN. It was almost as though I was hearing them for the first time. How had I not gotten how deep these women went? Renée Elise Goldsberry’s breath control alone was enough to take my breath away. I knew I had to get back. My obsession to see it again relaunched. The next time I was in the city, to tape Late Night with Seth Meyers, my publicist was like, “We should just go by the theater.” That’s how a lot of people get tickets because people drop out at the last minute. So we stopped by and nada. Zilch. I tweeted my utter devastation and disappointment. Next thing I know, Oak, aka Hercules Mulligan, tweeted me back.
I got you boo. DM me.
I DM’d him and he goes, “Shoot this girl an email. She will take care of you. She will hook it up. Magic@stardust.com.”4
My tickets for that night, my second time seeing it and my first time seeing Lin, were prih-tee bomb ass. When I tell you they were the best fucking seats in the house—I was at the aisle, I was the second person in the bathroom, which, if you’ve ever seen a show at the Richard Rodgers you know is a BFD. The intermission bathroom lines, oy vey. I found out later that we were in the Obama seats. Yeah, I was sitting where President Barack Obama sat when he first saw the show! Can you say ballerrrrrrrrrrr?! I brought Rosa along again. We’d started this ride together and we were gonna go for another go-round together. There was nobody else I’d rather see Hamilton with again. We are soul sisters so I knew she wouldn’t judge me if/when I lost my shit again because I knew she’d be boo-hooing right along with me.
I decided to be bold and DM Lin. “I’m coming tonight, and I’m so excited to finally get to see you perform!” To my amazement, he wrote me back just minutes before the show started.
“Great, come backstage afterward!”
“Is he DMing you before the show?” Rosa asked incredulously.
“I’m that cool, homie.”
Cool until I lost it again watching the magic for the second time. Rosa and I fell apart, again, at the same parts. The difference this time was we were smart and had stopped at Duane Reade beforehand to get tissues. The two girls sitting next to us were bawling, too, so we shared our bounty of Kleenex. We were veterans giving back.
“Girl, you don’t even know,” we warned the one closest to Rosa.
“I’ve seen it before!” she whispered through her sniffles.
So we weren’t crazy! This is just what this show does to people. And trust me when I say it wasn’t just the women in the audience that were moved to tears. It was amusing to see how some of the men tried to hide their emotions. There was the “stare at your feet as though you don’t recognize the shoes you wore” strategy. The “cough and quickly wipe the tears with your fist before anyone sees the tears” trick. And my favorite (which I’ve employed myself), the “sit really still so as not to draw attention to the tears running past your cheeks and into the collar of your shirt” tactic. All valid attempts. All futile.
After the bows, Rosa and I went onstage again and I finally got to meet Lin. When he walked up to me and hugged me, it was as though we were grade-school friends who’d been separated because one of our families had moved cross-country but we’d stayed in touch all these years and FINALLY got to meet! (That’s how it was for me, anyway. I’m pretty sure he’s just that lovely to everyone.) I immediately teared up like the emotional sack that I am. I kind of made a REALLY big deal about how happy I was to finally meet him, and Oak—who had made it so I could actually get in to see the show—was like, “Just forget about me. That’s cool … just tossed to the side.” I told Oak he’s family.5
I was so happy to finally see Lin as Hamilton. He was everything I’d hoped/wanted/expected him to be. He’d allowed me to feeeel for Hamilton, the eagerness, pride, success, failure, guilt, pain, despair, gratitude. I’d never been obsessed with anything or anyone like that in my life. I’d had Michael Jackson posters on my bedroom wall growing up, but it wasn’t like I couldn’t live without him, I’d never even gone to a concert. I watched Elvis movies every other weekend growing up, to the point my mother would look at me and be like, “This one and huh Elvis.” I loved me some Elvis movies but I don’t own a single film or album of his. I’ve never been a true fangirl about anything except maybe the Louis Vuitton Alma bag in vernis.6 I have friends who are obsessed with a singer or band and find a way to see them whenever they’re on tour, and I never really got it. I just never liked anything that much … until Hamilton. I now understand what theater-heads experienced when Rent went up. Hamilton is MY Rent. I had JUST seen it for the second time, and all I could think was … HOW DO I GET BACK? I knew I was being greedy. I didn’t care. I. Was. Coming. Back.
I got invited to go to the Grammys that year. I said yes, not because the Grammys were cool and it was the best concert in town but because I knew, like everyone else, that Hamilton was gonna win for Best Musical Theater Album. I was most excited that the cast was to perform live for the broadcast. They weren’t even going to be at Staples Center. They were performing via satellite from the Richard Rodgers. No matter. I was geeked to be “there.” As excited for the win as someone who actually had something to do with the production. I saw a few weeks later on Snapchat that Daveed Diggs had people in his dressing room doing shots out of his Grammy while the rest of the group yelled, “Shots Out the Grammyyyyyy!” It looked glorious and I was totes jelly of every person who got to participate.
My birthday was coming up in April and I asked some friends to do a trip to New York to celebrate. My hope was to get us Hamilton tickets. They were more than aware of my Hamilmania and wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I emailed Oak’s girl, Kaitlin, who said she couldn’t promise anything but she’d get back to me. Two weeks later she blessed us with the news that we indeed had four tickets on the day before my birthday. Oh man, this was going to be the best birthday ever. We flew to New York and got connecting suites at the Gansevoort Park Hotel, which hooked us up with a birthday cake from a yummy bakery across the street and champagne. Two days before the show, on a little bubbly buzz, I wanted to DM Lin again to make sure he’d be in the show we were seeing. Cuz I was selfish and drunk like that.
I’m coming for my birthday my girls are in town! Wanted to see if you’re performing.
No response. I felt a little queasy, like I’d crossed a line. I mean, I knew he had like, a billion things to do and people tugging at him from all directions. What made me think he was looking to keep me abreast of his performance schedule? I felt stupid. Then I realized he’d given me his cell number the last time I was in town. Whaaaaat? How did I not know I had a direct line? Foolish is how. I hesitated for one second, not wanting to be a stalker, but then I was like, FUCK IT and texted.
This time, he replied right away.
Yes so excited! Have something for you!
Pour moi? Little old moi?
We got to the show and had great seats again. We were buzzing with excitement when a lovely young lady leaned down and said, “Hi, Retta. I’m Kaitlin.” Kaitlin! The sweet angel who had hooked me up with the tix this time and last. I was so excited to meet her. I told the girls who she was and they, too, were excited to meet the woman behind the gift. She said hi and told us to enjoy the show. Oh don’t you worry, Kaitlin. We will! No doubt in my mind. Well most of us were. Tej was upset that Leslie Odom Jr. was not performing that night.7
The show started and the fucking guy behind us started singing along, tapping his feet against my chair and giving commentary for his friend like it was a live version of Mystery Fucking Science Theater 3000. The fuck?? Oh hellz no. He was not about to ruin this experience for me. My friend Tina and I were so angry but couldn’t say anything because, just before the show started, Tej had said hi to this guy. I didn’t wanna make it weird for her by going off on him if this was a business colleague. I know people are excited to be there, hell, I had to force myself not to sing along. I curbed my shit because I knew how annoying it is and I wasn’t looking to get cut by someone who’d paid two grand to see the show WITHOUT my accompaniment. He finally caught on and shut the fuck up. I’m guessing it was all the obvious exhaling from the folks around him that got him to calm his ass down.
Intermission came and I looked over to my girls to see what they thought. Tej and Britnee were both tear-soaked.
“Omigod are y’all crying already??”
“I started crying in the opening number,” Britnee said.
“I know. I just can’t believe we’re here,” Tej could barely get out.
I laughed. If they cried through the first half, there was no way they would survive the second.
By the end of the show, as I expected, they were fucking broken. We made our way onstage and I again was in awe of this wonderful cast. Lin came over to me, wished me a happy birthday, and handed me a gift. It was a signed copy of Hamilton: The Revolution,8 more affectionately known to superfans as The Hamiltome. It was the day before the official release date, April twelfth (my birthday), and I’d already preordered two copies that were being delivered to my house. He had signed it,
For Retta—
Treat. Yo. Self.
Siempre,
Lin
I’d already had the best birthday weekend with my girls, shopping and eating at great restaurants, and this was the icing on the dang cake.
When the Tonys came up in June, and Hamilton was nominated for sixteen awards, more than any other Broadway production in history, I was so happy for them. I literally have nothing to do with the show but it was very important to me to celebrate their Tony win(s). You didn’t have to be psychic to know they were going to win. I wanted to be there for this moment. I wanted to go to the actual awards at the Beacon Theatre but was told, “You can’t. Trust me, there is no room in that building.” Lucky for me I got an invite to the Hamilton party. Say word. Andrew Chappelle, who is a swing9 in the show, requested that I get an invite and sure enough I did! I legit flew across the country for a party. I mean it wasn’t just any party. It was the Hamilton Tony party at Tavern on the Green and I’m here to tell you it was worth it.
First off, Questlove was the DJ. If that’s not an indication of how things were gonna go, I don’t know what would be. There was food, drinks, drinks, and more drinks. I went with Rosa, duh, and got to hang with a new friend, Busy Phillips, who I had literally met through Snapchat. I congratulated Leslie and Lin on their wins and got to meet Lin’s wife, Vanessa, who couldn’t be lovelier.
“I feel like I know you!” I said.
“I know!” she said.
Oh gosh. She must’ve thought I was a stalker.
To clarify, I said, “I saw you on Rachael Ray!” Eesh, did that seem even more stalkerish? As obsessed with Lin, the genius behind my Hamilton obsession, as I was, it wasn’t the I-want-to-steal-your-husband-away kind of love. I just think he’s brilliant. I want his life to remain pristine. Him and his wife and his kids and his parents and family—I want everything to stay perfect and great ’til the end of time. I want each and every one of them to remain together and happy for as long as they all shall live. It’s weird now that I read it but it’s true. My friend Meredith has the same kind of love for President Obama. She thinks he’s the most handsome and most charming, most loving, funny, generous man to walk this earth. I told her she sounded like she wanted to get in his pants. She said no, that she loves him with Michelle and wants him to stay with her forever and that they had the perfect family. I now get what she meant.
Now, you’d think I would’ve had my fill of Hamilton at this point. I’d seen it THREE times and got to celebrate the Tony success. You’d THINK … until I heard that Lin would be leaving the show. Lin, Leslie, and Phillipa Soo would be making their last appearance on the Hamilton stage on July 9, 2016. I wanted to go. I had to go. I had a serious conversation with myself: “It’s ridiculous that you think you’re going to go. There’s no way.” And then the little devil took over. Just try. Just email Kaitlin. What could it hurt? The worst that could happen is she says, “No, not possible.” I knew it was probably a fucking shitshow with regard to ticket requests. I mean tickets for weekday matinees were impossible so tix for this LAST show were gonna be harder to get than seats next to Michelle at Obama’s first inauguration. But you know what? You only live once. I said fuck it. I emailed her. “Is Rodgers sold out for Lin’s last week?”
“Like you wouldn’t believe. We might have a couple tix in the front mezz for his last night, but that’s it…”
Wait, what? I might be able to go to that last performance. My heart started to race. My schedule was batshit crazy at the time. For one, I had just started working in earnest on this book and I had already made plans to go up to San Jose to watch the Sharks in the Stanley Cup finals. I couldn’t afford another weekend out of town. But guess what … I figured that shit out.
I texted Tej to tell her the good news, then asked if she wanted to go since she didn’t get to see Leslie the first time. She was IN. A few days later she sent me a text with a link to an article that said tickets to Lin’s final show were selling for $20,000! You heard me right. Two-zero-zero-zero, and one more zero! That’s MORE than a used Birkin bag. Wait, the Birkin has a utilitarian purpose and will be used for more than one night. That Birkin was becoming more of a steal than I THOUGHT! As far as I’m concerned I was saving money going on this trip cuz I promise you I spent nowhere near twenty grand … that’s including airfare, room, tax, incidentals, AND any other expenses.
Tej and I flew out together and made a girl’s weekend of it. We had tix to the closing night of She Loves Me, starring my friend Zac Levi, Laura Benanti, and Jane Krakowski. We made a reservation for dinner at legendary theater hangout Sardi’s before the Hamilton performance. I was excited for it all. The afternoon before the show we had brunch with Andrew Chappelle, Oak, and Kaitlin, better known as my #HamilAngels. They talked about a big after-party for Lin thrown by his father. Kaitlin said she’d have invited me but had no control over the guest list.
“You can be my plus-one,” Oak said to me.
You guys. I mean. It was almost too much.
And when I tell you that Lin’s last show was epic. If I thought the energy in the room was electric the previous time I had seen it, this night it was off the charts. You couldn’t help but feel like your molecules were buzzing knowing you got into the room where it was happening on this night. We were all looking around trying to remember every single thing about this moment.
First off, I saw Rosie O’Donnell in the lobby. I’d seen her on The Late Late Show with James Corden when, at the time, she had seen Hamilton twelve times. This was to be her twenty-fourth viewing. Yeah. Insert wide-eyed emoji HERE! I said hi to her and I’m sure she thought, I don’t know you but “Hey.” I felt we shared an obsession and that if she did know me she’d get me. Other celebs to score these precious tickets were J.Lo with her twins and signif other at the time, Casper Smart; my friends Troy Garity and his wife, Simone Bent, and his mom; Jane Fonda; Charlie Rose; Spike Lee; Mariska Hargitay and Peter Hermann10; and one John Kerry, who created a surprising amount of curiosity among the night’s patrons.
When the lights went down the crowd erupted. It was about to begin. Leslie began the opening as he had so many times before, but this time he walked onto stage like a man who knew he had done his job and had done it well. When he got to the line, “Get your education, don’t forget from whence you came, and the world is gonna know your name. What’s your name, man?” Lin made his entrance. When he sang “Alexander Hamilton” the crowd started an applause that lasted a full minute. I don’t know how Lin didn’t lose it cuz I did. The rest of the night was charged with an emotion you can only imagine.
I remember our last week shooting Parks. Every day was charged with emotion as, one by one, cast members had their series wrap. The last to wrap was Amy, and it brought tears to our eyes (especially Jim cuz he’s a big baby and cries at everything). Saying good-bye to seven years of work that garnered familial feelings toward the people around you. It’s the kind of emotion that makes it hard to function. That is the emotion I can only imagine he was going through … and he still had two and a half hours of show to do.
When Leslie performed “In the Room Where It Happens” it was like I’d never seen him before, and the crowd awarded him for it. The applause was loud, long, and heartfelt. Rory O’Malley, who had had his first performance as the king on the night my friends and I attended for my birthday, played the monarch with such whimsy that it brought such joy to us, his subjects. Chris Jackson was feeling the feels, too. I imagine it was hard to perform for the last time with his bestie. One of my favorite moments was when Oak came onstage as Madison after “It’s Quiet Uptown” and was way more choked up than I remember him in the previous two times I had seen him play the ex-president. Phillipa Soo … what can I say about Phillipa Soo other than she broke me for one last time. Her final number, the show’s final number, was just … heavy. So, so heavy. She was a fucking trooper, getting through it without collapsing.
The curtain call was another exercise in stillness and composure. The audience once again gave each performer their due praise. My hands hurt I clapped so hard. And at this point I feel it’s probably moot to point out I was hardly dry-eyed. Once we pulled ourselves together, Tej and I made our way to the stage for one final round of after-show kudos. Onstage I got to chat with my friends Troy and Simone. There were so many people onstage it was difficult to see who of the cast was still there. Obviously everyone wanted to share their love and appreciation for what they had given us. I finally saw Daveed in the crowd. I walked over to him to tell him he was great as usual and that the only thing I regretted was having never participated in “Shots Out the Grammy!”
“Oh snap! Let’s go do it right now!”
He proceeded to yell for Oak to join us. I was so geeked I didn’t know what to do with myself. On the way to the production office where the Grammys were being stored, Oak stopped near a white-haired woman with a friendly smile and asked, “Retta, do you know who this is?” I assumed she was either a liberal arts professor of some sort or an award-winning poet. She had that look about her. I sheepishly replied, “I don’t,” to which he replied, “This is Daveed’s mom!” I was like, “Heyyyyyyyy!” I was thrilled to meet her and thought she was the cutest thing.
“Wait, you’re Retta? You’re great at Twitter.”
Shut the front door. Daveed’s mom was familiar with my Twitter game. Hahahaha. That small acknowledgment brought me a disproportionate amount of pride. We all went into the production office along with Tej, Seth Stewart, and a few others. Barbara (Daveed’s mom), Seth, and I did “Shots Out the Grammy!” It was epic and it was more than I could’ve asked for on this night.
The after-party was at the Renaissance New York Times Square Hotel. I got a drink at the bar and ran into Barbara who, at this point, I was calling Babs. She joined me on a bench against a window. The party attendees were having a great time and I watched from the side. Lin walked over and we got to chat for a moment. It wasn’t a long chat, but I remember feeling that it, oddly, gave me some closure on this fangirl experience that had been so foreign to me and yet so all-encompassing. I got to have my closure with Hamilton. From the time I downloaded that soundtrack up until the time I was lucky enough to see the show for the fourth time, I’d listened to the album Every. Single. Day. On my phone, in my car, while cleaning my house, before I went to sleep.
After a yearlong fixation, it was time to move on.
I still keep in touch with some of the cast, like Oak and Andrew. Lin sent me a friend request on Facebook. Like a geek, I screen-grabbed it and sent it to my friends. At first, I was afraid to accept it because as much as I feel like we’re totes besties and of course should be FB friends, I felt I didn’t want him to know my foolishness. I didn’t want him to see my page and be like, “Retta posts a lot about Hamilton. Yikes. This bitch is crazy.”
PLUS, I know one day they will make a movie version of Hamilton. You never know. It’s not beyond the realm of believability that they’d consider a plus-size Angelica. And if I get that call from my manager …
“This is big. This is really big.”
You better believe I’m showing up for that shit. I’m not going to make that mistake twice.
This time, I’ll bring my flats.11