By MARK KENNEDY AP Entertainment Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — Leslie Odom Jr., one of the original cast members of the mega-hit Broadway musical “Hamilton,” is coming back for another shot, a role he says “gave me life.”
Odom, who played Aaron Burr opposite Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Alexander Hamilton, will return to his Tony Award-winning role at the Richard Rodgers Theatre on Sept. 9 through Nov. 23.
“I was born on the stage of the Richard Rodgers in so many ways. It gave me life in a way,” he tells The Associated Press. “I’m really looking forward to it.”
Odom and Miranda both left the show in July 2016 after the same performance. Odom had been with “Hamilton” since it first began performances in early 2015 off-Broadway.
“I look back on it fondly, I do,” he says. “It was the start of so much for me. It was the start of a career that I always dreamed of. It’s just the beginning. It’s the genesis.”
He estimates he played Burr some 500 times, but it never got boring: “It still had revelation for me, and it still gave me reason to look a little deeper and focus a little harder.”
When he returns, he’ll be with a new company of actors and will bring to the audience his willingness to discover in the moment, something he says he learned doing “Hamilton.”
“I want them to see something exciting and alive. And the best way for me to do that is to be open and present in that moment,” he adds.
Odom earned another Tony nomination last year for the comedy “Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch” by Ossie Davis.
After “Hamilton,” he was on the big screen in “Glass Onion” with Daniel Craig and “The Many Saints of Newark” with Alessandro Nivola, and portrayed Sam Cooke in “One Night in Miami.”
He lent his voice to the animated series “Central Park” and starred opposite Kate Hudson in Sia’s “Music. ” His TV credits include “Abbott Elementary” and “Blue’s Clues & You.”
Odom, who studied at Carnegie Mellon University, became the youngest cast member in the Broadway company of “Rent.” Before “Hamilton,” he appeared on TV in the series “Smash” and “CSI: Miami,” in the film “Red Tails” and on Broadway in “Leap of Faith.”
During the pandemic, Disney+ broadcast a filmed version of the original Broadway cast of “Hamilton,” who Miranda has called “an incredible ’28 Yankees of actors”.
The Broadway show won 11 Tony Awards, including best new musical, best book and best score. The cast album has been a blockbuster, and the show has toured to packed houses.
The musical charts the rise and fall of statesman Hamilton and stresses his orphan, immigrant roots — “Immigrants. We get the job done!” is one line that gets huge applause — as well as his almost Greek tragedy of a fall, fed by ambition.
Based on a biography by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron Chernow and developed during the presidency of the first Black president, the show was optimistic and ambitious, tweaking Broadway traditions but respecting them, too. Odom says he’s rereading Chernow’s biography to get ready.
Many in the cast alongside Odom were relatively unknown to the wider world when they hit the stage: Daveed Diggs, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Jonathan Groff, Christopher Jackson, Okieriete Onaodowan, Anthony Ramos and Phillipa Soo. Even Miranda wasn’t yet a brand name.
Odom, who shoots Hamilton dead, sang on many of the musical’s best songs, including “Wait for It” “Dear Theodosia” “The Room Where It Happens” and “Your Obedient Servant.”
He says he often sings the songs during concerts but will have to relearn the score. “One of the most important gifts that it gave me was this association with some recognizable tunes that people like to hear,” he says.