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To get even realer with you for a second, as a black actor, as a performer of color, I don't know how many more roles like Aaron Burr are gonna come along for me.
Leslie Odom, Jr.
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There's this Frank Wildhorn tune 'Sarah' - it's not a widely known tune, but it's my favorite song to sing.
Leslie Odom, Jr.
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You gotta prove yourself. I'm not above that. I will never be above that. Bring it!
Leslie Odom, Jr.
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The record company felt wisely that we should get something out before I left 'Hamilton' or around awards time, and that deadline was not easy.
Leslie Odom, Jr.
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People are coming to you at their most vulnerable; they're showing you the parts of themselves that they're afraid to show: the parts that they're not so sure about, not so secure in. And so it's a really holy profession I think, teaching. If you do it right, it can change somebody's life.
Leslie Odom, Jr.
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I haven't had a chance to decorate my dressing room yet, but I have these pictures of myself as a kid that I want to put up because I said, 'I really want to make sure that I take that kid with me on this journey.' I want him to experience this.
Leslie Odom, Jr.
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I wanted to make an album that was hopeful and encouraging and inspiring. That was the goal.
Leslie Odom, Jr.
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I have a great foundation, a great training foundation. But it took me a long time to let the training go.
Leslie Odom, Jr.
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Until you make a name for yourself, they're like, 'Be a little more Denzel,' 'Be a little more Wesley Snipes.'
Leslie Odom, Jr.
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I know what it's like to be ignored; when I got to L.A., I longed for somebody who looked like me to show me the ropes.
Leslie Odom, Jr.
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I think for a lot of us, you know, what 'Hamilton' gave us the opportunity to, what it gave me the opportunity to do, was to go, 'Here's what I've learned in 35 years.'
Leslie Odom, Jr.
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I remember Ella Fitzgerald sort of coming into my life like a bolt of lightning - like, what is that? It was one of the purest examples of God in art that I'd ever seen.
Leslie Odom, Jr.
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'Hamilton' has restored my faith in theater.
Leslie Odom, Jr.
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We want to pull out songs from the American song book, and we want to make them palatable for a modern audience.
Leslie Odom, Jr.
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I don't want to leave anything offstage.
Leslie Odom, Jr.
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Sometimes I think of creativity or art as this well that we all draw from.
Leslie Odom, Jr.
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We don't get to get swept up, because we have to start over every day at 8 o'clock.
Leslie Odom, Jr.
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I was a good student; I was a good boy. I got A's, and I did all the papers right.
Leslie Odom, Jr.
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I've been involved with 'Hamilton' for about two and a half years. I've learned so much. I came into it a young man. Now I've dropped the 'young.'
Leslie Odom, Jr.
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None of us get to divorce ourselves from the world. We walk into the theater and bring all of our grief and our pain and our joy with us.
Leslie Odom, Jr.
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Making $1,260 a week at 17 years old? That was a million dollars a week to me!
Leslie Odom, Jr.
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I grew up in the Canaan Baptist Church.
Leslie Odom, Jr.
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What's a better foundation for drama? You have power, you have ambition, you have sex... that's the stuff of drama.
Leslie Odom, Jr.
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When I see the black experience - there's not one, but it is specific, and you can't ignore it.
Leslie Odom, Jr.
