I was a kid carrying around a camera. My dad had one of those big overtheshoulder camcorders and brought it home. Charlie did you think you might be a director . Linmanuel i did. Steven spielberg doesnt get you far in school. I kind of figured out who i was socially by doing a school play. I got cast in the sixth grade play. I played a lot of people. Charlie does that just happen . How has is it that one kid wants to do those things . What was it in you that made you want to do those things because those are the things you do. Linmanuel isnt that incredible that we get to do what we love . You have to think about how you lucked into this. I grew up in a house where cast albums were almost always playing. Charlie all the great albums. Linmanuel south pacific, sound of music, king and i. That was the music we played to clean up after parties. It was latin music at the party because we are puerto rican. Then when we would clean up the house after the party, we would put on the cast album. That is what i keyed into. Charlie were you shy or like you are now . Linmanuel i still think im shy. I do. I fell in love with i like applause. I wasnt the kind of person who would take over a run to take over it but if i had something i was good at, i was eager to share it. My mothers favorite story is our first piano recital. I only practiced well enough to play one song. I learned four but it was the only one i could reliably do well. It was my first song and they clapped and i looked up and looked around and said i know another one. If this is going to be the reaction. And i played four songs. Charlie that reminds me ted williams once told me i said why baseball . He said i was pretty good and i got applause and i wanted to hear more applause so i got better. It was an incentive. Linmanuel i dont think im cut out to be a novelist. Sitting alone and not getting the payoff. Im fine with sitting alone. Writing hamilton was a six years of sitting alone but the payoff is i get to play it for someone and they have ideas on how to make it better and alex knows how to make it better. In and he how to stage it. There is this show and tell. The gratification of the other verses film and television. The audience lets you know in the moment how they are feeling about what you are doing. You doubt act once in a camera and then it is in a can and you hope they like it. Charlie and it changes night to night. Linmanuel we have a front row of people who literally won a lottery to be there and they give us everything. They are there and they didnt even know they would be there that night. They are experiencing it for the first time and i experience it for the first time because they are. Charlie growing up here, you make your way down to manhattan. To Hunter College. Linmanuel Hunter College high school and Elementary School. Charlie why hunter . Linmanuel you have to ask my parents. I took the test when i was five. I won the lottery when i was five when i passed the mysterious tests that get you into Hunter CollegeElementary School because i got a great Free Public School education. I was learning about matisse and Jackson Pollock in kindergarten. I remember making drip paintings when i was six years old and getting my early appreciation for art even then. And a school that really valued the arts and put them on the same level as a math and social studies and history. The culmination my school was to do the sixth grade play. We did 28 versions of six musicals. That is a lethal dosage. Wasem to be only one that stuck with it and could not let it go. I played conrad birdie. My nanny made my gold Leather Jacket and every girl had to pretend to fall in love with me ng. Faint when i sayin why would anyone else do anything else for a living . I was 12 years old, three feet tall. When i played conrad birdie but i was the sex symbol of the grade. Charlie you knew early on you wanted to be an artist. Linmanuel i didnt know whether it would be movies, theater, animation. I was always gravitated towards that. Charlie but you are doing this without any formal musical training. Linmanuel Just High School music class and piano lessons. We had a great ninthgrade teacher. I learned my major and minor chords. I remember calling my friend alex and saying im playing in f sharp an a and a c, what is that . I didnt know the names but i knew i needed them for the songs. Charlie did you have a good ear . Linmanuel i have a good ear. Charlie they say you are a fantastic mimic. You could do that. You could hear something and repeat it. A song. Linmanuel got very impatient with piano lessons because the reading was slow. If i could hear it i could figure out the chords and play it faster than it would take. It was a faster system between my ears and my hands than my eyes. Charlie that served you the rest of your life. What music did you listen to beyond showtunes, beyond famous musicals . Linmanuel i was into hiphop. I dont i was born in 1980s so there wasnt ever a time where hiphop wasnt part of my life. Charlie was it your music from the time you heard it . Linmanuel it was mine and my sisters. My parents werent bringing hiphop records home. My sister was bringing home the fat boys and she took me to see beat street. Charlie it resonated with you. Linmanuel it was just our music. The album that really unlocked it for me, that gave me permission to start writing, it was an album called bizarre ride to the far side. I was a 14. The lead single was about these guys who couldnt get girls and so much hiphop is about bluster and how much jewelry i have and how great a rapper i am and this was about people writing love notes and the note coming back return to sender. I had a crush on my teacher. And i was like i could get into that. [laughter] the great hook that has sampled by a million artists since is my dear, my dear, my dear, you do not know me but i know you very well and let me tell you about the feelings i have for you when i try or make some sort of attempt, i symp i wish i wasnt such a wimp because then i would let you know that i love you so and if i was your man, then i would be true the only lying i would do is in the bed with you it was so angsty and great. I memorized that album quickly. I absorbed hiphop by making mix tapes with my friends. I have this stuff, what do you have . I got into all these different genres. Charlie the interesting thing about hamilton was the mix tapes. Linmanuel i think of a mix tapes as sonic love letters. I think a lot of my Creative Energy in high school was spent literally making mix tapes to girls i liked, for friends of mine who i wanted them to get to know who i was. It was easier for me to say this 90 minutes on this cassette tape. It defines who i am. Differences, you have to listen to it consecutively. I am taking you on a ride. Im going to have a high energy song. And i put it in into a funny interlude. My fourth song is the most important. It tells you who i really am. It was that and cleanup. I think i still build scores the way we build mix tape for girls. Now we can afford to sit for a little while. Now i have to wake you up. When i read rons book and started thinking about it, i thought of it the way i started think of making mix tapes for my friends. It is i will take you on the ride. It is going to tell the story of this mans life. Charlie the first step is to draw you in. Linmanuel the first song is everything. If you fastforward through the first song, you messed up. [laughter] linmanuel remember, you are listening to it consecutively. I set it as a challenge to encapsulate hamiltons entire life into one song. And so it forced me to think in a hamiltonian way. I was telling you before the thing about hamilton is he spoke in paragraphs. The opening sentence is this runon sentence. 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. That is the question we are going to answer for the next two hours and 45 minutes. It is a very hamiltonian. Charlie you put in that some 20 that song 20 years of living. When you begin to think about things and at the same time occasionally going once a year or more with your parents to the theater, what were you thinking . What was that like . Linmanuel it was lifechanging. In a couple of ways. One, the first show i remember seeing is a remember a few things from the night. I remember falling asleep for a little while because i was seven. I remember the suicide, the master of the house and laughing really hard. Muchneeded laughter. The thing i remember most was seeing my parents brought home the two disc cast album and my mother would play bring him home on a loop and burst into tears and it really moved me the effect music had on her. Lord on high hear my prayer linmanuel seeing how this story and this man wanting this kid to live moved my mother to tears. I think that is as much of reason im in musical theater as anything else. Charlie because of the emotional connection with your mother . Linmanuel because of the power musical theater has in terms of emotional connection. Musical theater is not one art form. It is 14 art forms together. The lighting, the costumes have to be right. When it all conspired to create those moments there is nothing like it. Charlie and to say there is nothing like it means it has delivers more of an emotional punch than any other kind of visual or musical influence. Linmanuel because its happening to you live. There is no distance of the screen. You see it yet you cant believe you are seeing it. Im thinking of the final moment of america in west side story, the bottle dance on fiddler on the roof. It cant possibly go any further and then it does. There are these moments when you stand outside yourself like how am i really a person watching this . When you are creating it you are looking to create those moments. Charlie and then you go see rent. Linmanuel rent did for me what the far side did for me. It said, you can write this. We are not so different, you and i. Musical theater and you. It is about people living, struggling as artists. It was the career i saw myself going into. Struggling as an artist. Charlie and living and dying. Linmanuel and in the present. It took place now and in a neighborhood just down town my sister grew up. My parents went to nyu together. They were all in the village. That was before i was born. But it gave me permission you are allowed to write about what you know. That is fair game. I did not know that. Not in my bones. Charlie you said it was a starter pistol for your career. Linmanuel absolutely. Charlie you heard the starter go off. And for you, it propelled you forward. Linmanuel larson, who sadly died before his show even opened did so many of the things i wanted to do. He made a contemporary sound relevant. He ended the conversation as to whether rock had a place in musical theater. It started in hair, in jesus christ superstar. We would still have these conversations. Now its just a part of language. It was huge. Charlie do you think it gave you any sense of mortality knowing jonathans story . Linmanuel i think jonathans passing before his show opened scared the hell lot of me. You could go at any time. Those ideas you have in your head will stay locked in your head. They go with you unless you get them out into the world. That is still true. Charlie how so . Manuel then nothing is promised. Tomorrow is not promised. I made plans to come talk to you today but my car could have gone over the highway on the way here. We never know what the next day will bring and yet we plan months and years, which is the most vainglorious hope. It is both terrifying embarking on a show like this, on any creative endeavor is terrifying because you might not make it to the finish line. Charlie and the finish line is not tomorrow. Linmanuel the finish line the thing that was in your head into the world. It wasnt about having a career, it was get this thing out of my head so it can exist. Then i can get hit by a bus. Charlie what was the thing to get out . Linmanuel it was cam we had a latino musical where we are not murderers from the 1950s . Great musical west side story. Great score. But its such a peculiar subset and tiny slice of latino experience for only gangsters be represented in musical theater. That is what we had. I wanted a licensed business and i wanted to see if we could write a musical about latinos that didnt have any drug deals or crime. Because he will see that on the news. Thats what they cover, crimes. I was interested in the hardworking people i grew up with then the guy on the corner. The guy on the corner is there but its also a guy inside the store on the corner. I wanted to tell his story. Charlie what did you have to get out with hamilton . Linmanuel i had to get out this guys life. It wasnt until i really want in and started researching that i was in the same theme i was with in the heights. Heres an immigrant, an outsider who writes his way in, right his way to prominence, charms his wife through letters, rights his way into his personal and professional life but then he doesnt know when to shut up and he also selfdestructs in his writing. I had a really good idea at the top of the book. He writes this poem. A hurricane destroys st. Croix. He writes up home about the carnage of a hurricane. It is used for leaf efforts into scholarship is raised to send him to the mainland. He wrote a poem and i said thats the most hiphop thing i ever heard. Its a story of creating something beautiful out of the ashes of something else. The south bronx was a mess in the 1970s. It was burnt down buildings, empty parking lots, graffiti. It was block parties happening. It was something beautiful being created out of the ashes of something old. That is what hamilton did and he wrote about his struggles and got out on the strength of his writing and that is the trajectory of so many hiphop artists i respect. Charlie the ability to express yourself in words. Linmanuel the ability to be a reporter on the frontlines of where you grew up in your struggle and that is what hamilton did. He said my island is ruined. That is what jayz writes about when he writes about the projects. It is writing your way out and that hope that if you can write and you are smart, you can get out. I had that good idea in the Second Chapter and the idea of him as a hiphop artist, it just kept as i read the book, it kept proving me right. I felt like a mosquito and i hit an artery. It just kept proving me right in a million different ways. He wrote under a pseudonym like so many rappers do, took up a moniker to write against a royalist. Then he becomes washingtons aid to camp. He is responsible for washingtons correspondence during the revolutionary war. He has the front seat. Charlie he wanted to be there. Linmanuel he wanted to fight. That is the other fun thing. He has the plum job and hes like give me a command. Charlie because heroes come from the battlefield. Linmanuel and social mobility comes from the battlefield. I dont have connections. Mothers gone, dad is lord knows where, and i have got to make my bones as a glorious fighter or i can die as a martyr, which would also be fine. Charlie a certification of i belong. Linmanuel i belong, i fought for this country. Charlie im an american. Linmanuel and the fact that its an immigrant outsider who created the notion of one america more than anyone else through his financial system. We were also speaking of ourselves as commoner. We were thinking of ourselves as colonies. People would say to jefferson, will you vote for hamiltons plan or are you new yorks countryman . By the country, they meant virginia. This is what began this thinking of ourselves as one nation. Its an outsider immigrant who did that. Charlie thats like the greatest day of your life when you discovered Alexander Hamilton. Because of what you were able to do with it. Linmanuel i saw a way into the story. I immediately went to google and said someone has done this. Its too good a story for there not to be three musicals about hamilton that i dont know about. So i got to work because i wanted to get there first. Charlie the immigrant thing. Is there a connection with your father because he made the decision to come here from puerto rico . Linmanuel i father is technically not an immigrant because puerto rico is part of the united states. Charlie he is from and i went. Linmanuel from the caribbean and not speaking a word of english. He graduated college by 18 in puerto rico. He is the genius of the family. Im the slacker. Charlie do you in any way have an immigrants connection beyond your father. Is there this idea of being an immigrant inside of your own psyche . Linmanuel i grew up in an immigrant neighborhood. A historically immigrant neighborhood. It was irish and then became a dominican immigrants and latino immigrants. I think i come at it from a different angle, which was i want a lottery. I learned to pronounce my name differently in english and spanish. I was speaking spanish at homecoming bush high school. I i was a little of myself in is both places and it wasnt you and i until i grew up i started bringing all of myself to the room. And its a great way to make a writer. A part of you was always observing because you are trying to figure out where you fit in. Charlie you had are ready written in the heights when this occurred. Linmanuel yes. People were asking what is your next thing going to be. Charlie that was part of it. You had done something and wasnt sure about in the next step. Linmanuel i dont think it was a cool incident it was my first vacation. It was the first time i had any time off. Charlie having done what you had done and you were on the beach not knowing where you might go, you bought to this big 800 page book. And hamilton speaks to you instantly. What do you do when you come back from your vacation . Linmanuel star writing. I go back to eight shows a week but i started writing. I finish the book on vacation and i was like, this will be a beast. Charlie but you knew. Linmanuel i was making lists of what the songs were. Charlie not a moment of doubt this is something. Linmanuel it was just can i do it . Charlie this is my opportunity, my story, i was born to tell Alexander Hamiltons story. Can you imagine anybody else Better Qualified to tell this story venue . Linmanuel not in retrospect but at the time, i just felt i had a huge thing by the tail. I said its going to take everything ive got to wrestle this thing to the ground. John wightman is up here and a mentor who has wrestled history. As well as anyone could have ever done. I sent him emails and said the more research i do, i started getting bogged down. You cant stay attached to the drama of the throughline. That would lead to differing accounts and jefferson said this. He said just keep your head down and write. Getting it all into one show. Charlie all of the songs were there. Linmanuel i could feel the song moments but really being able to get it into a form that was to adjustabl