Frederick M. Brown/Getty ImagesThe Hamilton cast's performance at the White House in March brought many a livestream viewer to tears—but the experience also caused the people who were living it to break down too.
Daveed Diggs, who played the dual role of Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson in the groundbreaking musical up until a few weeks ago, revealed to TV critics at the 2016 summer TCA press tour that one particular moment during the made him cry.
"That day was—I don't even know really how to describe it," Diggs said. The cast members spent the day doing workshops with kids and filming videos in the White House before performing selections from Hamilton for the children they'd worked with and the Obama family.
But it was when he watched his castmate Christopher Jackson—a man of color, singing his character George Washington's "One Last Time," a song about stepping down from the presidency, with a portrait of the real-life Washington behind him and President Obama, in his last term, in front of them—that he welled up.
"You saw all of American history at one time and I cried. Everybody cried," Diggs confessed.
The cast's visit to the White House is a true full circle moment for the Hamilton musical, which first came into the public consciousness when creator Lin-Manuel Miranda performed what would be come the opening song of the musical at an event during President Obama's first term. That arc is explored in Hamilton's America, which follows the genesis of the musical phenomenon over three years. Filmmaker Alex Horwitz, a friend of Miranda's, began chronicling Hamilton's creation before it even became a full-fledged musical and was just an idea for a mixtape. "I didn't know what Lin was making any more than he did," Horwitz said on the panel.
The PBS documentary features interviews from President Obama, former President George W. Bush, two former treasury secretaries, Stephen Sondheim, Nas, and many more important figures in politics, musical theater and hip-hop.
Yes, that means a lot of footage. So in editing the piece, "we just kept our eye on that ball. That A-story to me is the same as the A-story of the musical: Hamilton. You cannot write anything more cinematic than that man's life story," Horwitz said. "The film is about Lin and his incredible company's lens on that story."
Hamilton's America premieres Oct. 21 on PBS.