Watch Lin-Manuel Miranda Spill Secrets About the Hamilton Cast and Share Backstage Stories

On The Kelly Clarkson Show, Lin-Manuel Miranda spilled the details on everything, from how he cast the Schuyler Sisters to how he "broke the law" during the show's original run.

By Kelsey Klemme Jul 03, 2020 9:05 PMTags

While we all wanted to be in the room where it happened, thanks to Kelly Clarkson we got to be in the Zoom where it happened!

Yesterday on The Kelly Clarkson show, the talk show host had the original Hamilton cast on as her guests via a digital version of her program.

Their appearance came ahead of today's highly-anticipated premiere of the original musical on Disney+, which took the world by storm back in 2015 when it premiered.

On Clarkson's show, Hamilton creator and star Lin-Manuel Miranda spent the episode spilling secrets from the set, including everything from the process of casting the original Schuyler Sisters Phillipa Soo, Renee Elise Goldsberry and Jasmine Cephas Jones as well as which cast members goofed around during rehearsals the most.

While on video with Soo, Goldsberry and Cephas Jones, Miranda shared how he came across each actress and knew that he had found the perfect cast for the iconic trio of sisters.

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Miranda shared how he stumbled upon Soo when she was doing an immersive performance of Dave Malloy's Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 and said, "I remember seeing it and thinking, 'Oh, she's a star!'"

He also recalled that when Goldsberry came in for his audition, he initially thought it was going to end up being a waste of time because she had only gotten the material from the casting director the day before and thought, "You can't learn this in a night, it took me a month to write it." However, as we know now, she could!

Finally, he recounted that when he heard Cephas Jones sing he realized that she was, "A for real R&B singer...I will buy this album the second it comes out whenever this person opens their mouth."

While each individual casting was so unique, it all perfectly came together, both on the stage and off.

"The real joy for me," Miranda shared, "Was while we were at the pub, like the three of them sharing a dressing room and becoming the Schuyler Sisters for real and harmonizing for fun. The song changed because I saw they were having so much fun harmonizing."

Hamilton Musical/Twitter

Clarkson then brought in additional original Hamilton cast members Christopher Jackson, Daveed Diggs and Okieriete "Oak" Onaodowan to play a fun game of "Most Likely To," where they spilled who in the cast would be the most likely person to do various things.

Turns out that Oak and Goldsberry would always get dance parties started, and that Oak has a pretty amazing impersonation of Mickey Mouse singing as Idina Menzel that you have to listen to.

However, the biggest secret that was spilled was one about Miranda himself. He joked that he "broke the law" by having the sound guys wire a microphone into his dressing room from the stage of the Les Misérables musical next door, allowing him to always get to listen to the end of Act I during his own show's intermission.

The past week has blessed us with so much Hamilton content, such as when the cast also sang "Helpless" along with Jimmy Fallon in the above video, and these backstage stories make us so happy that the Disney+ showing has finally dropped.

Be sure to watch it this weekend.

After all, you don't want to waste your shot to see it!