A Quote by Donna Lynne Champlin

I think with 'Hamilton,' Lin-Manuel has really blown up the whole casting idea. It's miraculous. You look at '1776,' it's a bunch of old white guys and old white chicks. You look at 'Hamilton,' and it's just the faces of America.

Donna Lynne Champlin

Quote Topics

America Blown Bunch Casting Chicks Faces Guys Hamilton Idea Just Look Miraculous Old Really Think Up White White Guys Whole

Quote Author

Donna Lynne Champlin
American - Actress
Born: January 21, 1971

Imagine if Lin-Manuel Miranda had tried to do 'Hamilton' first in Hollywood. They would have told him, 'The forefathers weren't Latino or black. They didn't speak in hip hop.' That would never had gotten going in Hollywood ever. But theater let Lin-Manuel him do it, and he created an incredible masterpiece.

John Leguizamo

In theater, you can be free. That's how Lin-Manuel Miranda got to do the most revolutionary piece of theater with 'Hamilton': color-blind casting in roles in which they would never cast Latinos if it were a film or TV show. It just goes to show that Hollywood and cable are way behind.

John Leguizamo

'Hamilton' is, of course, closely tied to the Obamas because Lin first performed the opening number at a White House poetry jam.

Phillipa Soo

If you seek Hamilton's monument, look around. You are living in it. We honor Jefferson, but live in Hamilton's country, a mighty industrial nation with a strong central government.

George Will

The road climbed into the mountains, Jonah taking the hairpin curves as fast as he dared. "You look so macho clutching the door handle that way," he said to Hamilton. "Just...be...careful," Hamilton said through clenched teeth.

Judy Blundell

With 'Hamilton,' what's cool about the show is that even super-old white people come to see the show and hang on every word, it's that good.

Okieriete Onaodowan

In 'Hamilton,' we're telling the stories of old, dead white men, but we're using actors of color, and that makes the story more immediate and more accessible to a contemporary audience.

Lin-Manuel Miranda

There was such hostility to the idea of a banjo being a black instrument. It was co-opted by this white supremacist notion that old-time music was the inheritance of white America.

Rhiannon Giddens

I didn't know anything about Eliza when I first got the call about 'Hamilton.' Tommy Kail, the director, asked me if I wanted to be a part of it. I knew what he was talking about because I'd seen the video of Lin performing it at the White House for Barack and Michelle Obama.

Phillipa Soo

The reason 'Hamilton' works is because there is no distance between that story that happened 200-some-odd years ago and now, because it looks like America now. It helps create a connection that wouldn't have been there if it was 20 white guys on stage.

Lin-Manuel Miranda

It's funny, but certain faces seem to go in and out of style. You look at old photographs and everybody has a certain look to them, almost as if they're related. Look at pictures from ten years later and you can see that there's a new kind of face starting to predominate, and that the old faces are fading away and vanishing, never to be seen again.

Alan Moore

I realized that for fantasy and science fiction, especially from my youth, white was the default. Luke Skywalker was in the lead, or even if you were a hobbit, you're going to be white. That was an extremely old-fashioned, obviously really narrow-minded way to look at things.

Brian K. Vaughan

I prefer black and white and portrait photography. I like old, you know, interesting faces, so I think black and white brings out the contrast.

Brooklyn Beckham

'Hamilton' just asks us all to go a little bit deeper: whether you're a hip-hop fan seeing musical theater for the first time, or if you were thinking you were gonna see some reprise of 1776, and now it's this? And you're thinking, 'Wait a minute, these people aren't white!' It asks you just take a step and go a little deeper.

Phillipa Soo

I'm afraid to look in the mirror. I'm afraid I'm going to see an old lady with white hair, just like the old ladies in the park. Alittle bundle in a black shawl just waiting for the coffin.