Dear Gossips,
For a few years there in the second half of the last decade, Hamilton was Duana’s entire personality. She managed to somehow work it into every conversation we had, especially when we were doing the Show Your Work podcast. So I texted her after the Tony Awards and asked her “are you alive?” She still hasn’t responded because, I suspect, she’s still sobbing on her couch.
How was it ten years ago?!
And now here they all are…
Lin-Manuel Miranda, Leslie Odom Jr, Daveed Diggs, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Phillipa Soo, Jasmine Cephas Jones, Christopher Jackson, Okieriete Onaodowan, Jonathan Groff, Anthony Ramos and so many more, the original Hamilton cast members, reuniting to commemorate the anniversary at the Tonys last night for an eight-song medley that’s just as extraordinary now as it was then. My heart!
My GOD, Leslie Odom Jr is an electrifying performer. And the girls, seeing the Schuyler sisters together again, the joy radiating from their faces because they were together again. My heart!
Daveed rolling his eyes as Jonathan makes his pompous entrance. The turntable! My heart!
And, of course, the gossip. Because Anthony and Jasmine on that stage, but far apart, and no longer engaged, because word is he cheated on her, and he had no solo and barely showed up on camera – though he was there, this is the tea that Hamilton hive has been sipping since last night. Because, of course, Hamilton is a multi-course meal: it’s a musical about work, with hip-hop as the soundtrack to tell the story of a “young, scrappy, and hungry” country that was, and continues to be, shaped by the gossip in the room where it happens as the world turns upside down. If only the people who need to hear it now could truly appreciate that history has its eyes on them.
If you haven’t already, get ready to burst into tears, and one watch won’t be enough.
Yours in gossip,
Lainey
