‘Hamilton’ star Daveed Diggs speaks on campus to sold-out crowd

Tony and Grammy award winner Daveed Diggs – actor, writer, producer, author and musician – captivated a sold-out audience in the Kiplinger Theatre at the Schwartz Center on Sept. 25 in a conversation with Samantha Sheppard, chair and associate professor of performing and media arts (PMA) in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Diggs, who originated the dual roles of the Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson in the smash musical “Hamilton,” was on campus as the 2024 Heermans-McCalmon Distinguished Guest Artist.

Theo Black, PMA senior lecturer, opened the evening with a poetical rap tribute to Diggs, with whom he’d acted before coming to Cornell. They cut their teeth “on the whetstone of Shakespeare” in “Troilus and Cressida.”

A graduate of Brown University, Diggs said he was a hurdler in college. He told the audience about twin hurdlers from Cornell with whom he said he used to “battle a lot.”

College didn’t change things that much for him, said Diggs. “Before school I was rapping, I was making plays and I was writing things, and I went to school and rapped and acted in plays and wrote things, and I left school and I rapped and wrote and acted in plays and I wrote things,” he said.

“So it was just kind of gaining knowledge and improving on a bunch of different skill sets that I never saw as separate. It was just kind of a continuation of the kind of thinking about what are interesting stories to tell and the different ways to tell.”

Diggs reminisced about the funk and disco music that influenced and inspired him when he was growing up, especially George Clinton. And while he said he was aware that those songs were political – “a lot of post-Vietnam, Black Arts movement rhetoric” – they were also “so funky and so danceable and so fun. So I think that for me … it’s got to be entertaining first.”

When a friend invited him to be part of the workshopping of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s new work-in-progress, Diggs asked what it was about. He was told it was “some rap musical about Alexander Hamilton.” 

Diggs’ response? 

“I was like, that’s a terrible idea.” 

When his friend asked again if he would do it, Diggs responded, “Are you gonna pay me?” The cash-strapped actor became one of the team who helped Miranda develop “Hamilton.” And though he described the songs as brilliantly constructed, perfect and amazing, Digg said the little demo tapes he got “sounded awful.”

The development of “Hamilton,” Diggs said, “was a very long process. That’s the thing that is good to remember. If you want to make something good it’s probably going to take you a long time.” He added with a laugh, “and that was good because I had to learn how to sing.”

Diggs made the point several times that the people he’d known the longest had been his greatest collaborators and guides to opportunities, like the friend who brought him to “Hamilton.” He told the audience of mostly students, “You’re probably working with your greatest collaborators right now.”

Diggs said his motto was “Energy up, expectations down.”

Asked what words of wisdom he could give to Cornell students, Diggs said, “Stop sweating the timeline. … Stop thinking about if you’re going be where you want to be by the time you are X. By the time you get there, the goalpost has moved, so it’s really a useless way to worry about it.”

Diggs also held a master class with PMA’s acting and film-making students. Before the workshop he sent the students a prompt from his screenplay adaptation of Percival Everett’s novel “Telephone,” from which they were to create their own scene. Diggs said the students at the class were “incredible.”

Tess Lovell ’24 created a six-minute adaptation of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” with her partner for the workshop.

Sharing a space with Diggs for two hours was “surreal,” she said.

“This is an actor whose voice most of us listened to for hundreds of hours during the most formative years of our lives, who was on our home turf, so present and engaged, watching us do what we love most,” Lovell said. “It was an unforgettable experience.”

Linda B. Glaser is news and media relations manager for the College of Arts and Sciences.