Renée Elise Goldsberry and the Importance of 'Hamilton' Right Now (2024)

It’s a precarious time for American forefathers, but it’s a foremother who stops time and steals the show in the filmed version of Hamilton, premiering on Disney+ on Friday. Renée Elise Goldsberry played the Common Sense–reading, never-satisfied Angelica Schuyler, a socialite daughter of the revolution and unsung intellectual heroine who had Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson’s ear, and who, some 200 years after the fact, finally gets to take center stage. “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal,” Goldsberry sings in one potent moment, “and when I meet Thomas Jefferson, I’m ’a compel him to include women in the sequel.”

While George Washington and Thomas Jefferson appear in all of their complicated glory on stage, (Hamilton, for one, doesn’t gloss over Jefferson’s reliance on enslaved labor), writer/star Lin-Manuel Miranda has said Angelica is “the smartest person in the show,” Goldsberry told Vogue by phone recently, “the one whose brain works a million miles an hour.”

The film, shot during two performances at Broadway’s Richard Rodgers Theatre in 2016 and released early as a kind of mid-pandemic gift to fans, finally gives the masses a coveted orchestra seat to the cultural phenomenon, including a stunning, full-body-goose-bumps-inducing view at the power of Goldsberry’s Tony-winning performance. She owns the Richard Rodgers in the haunting “Satisfied,” rapid-fire rapping in one breath, then bringing down the house in another.

Five years after Hamilton debuted to perennially sold-out audiences on Broadway, Goldsberry says the movie version comes at precisely the right time, amid a reckoning on race and telling history honestly. “It’s become a really wonderful way to shine a focus on the change that could really make this country the great country that they aspire to make it in Hamilton,” she said.

Goldsberry spoke with Vogue about Angelica’s colonial-era feminism, reconsidering the Founding Fathers, and the other live-action Hamilton movie in the works.

You were never able to watch your full performance in Hamilton until now. What did it feel like to finally see yourself?

We were all super anxious about it. We’ve been saying that it was just like a regular show, but it wasn’t. There were cameras everywhere. It was pretty frightening to think this could go really wrong, but, of course, it didn’t. [Director] Tommy Kail was the perfect person to make this love letter to the fans and to the company of actors and to Lin and to the world. Anybody that will tell you watching themselves, we’re extremely critical, but the movie is so breathtaking that you can’t stay in that place. You really have to get over yourself.

Hamilton came along just as you had your daughter and were planning a maternity leave. What about the show made you scrap your plan A?

I always say, ‘babies bring blessings,’ and let me tell you, my daughter brought me a big whopping blessing. I had this thought, that working would steal from my children, and what I affirmed when I’m looking through all of my pictures and videos from Hamilton is that this is one of the most special parts of their childhood. They grew up, we all grew up, with this show, and what a beautiful soundtrack to your childhood. What a beautiful group of people to grow up being loved by. My son’s fourth birthday, we were at the first preview of Hamilton off Broadway. As women, there’s so much guilt associated with anything that you’re doing that is not solely focused on the lives of your children, but I keep learning about the impact that it had not only on the world, but also on me and my children and my husband.

Angelica is such a powerful force in the show. You’ve said, ‘If she were a man, she would have been president,’ that among the forefathers, she was a foremother.

There is no question. Not a lot is written about Angelica Schuyler, but when you google her, you’ll see her described as a muse. She was famously, extremely influential. She did it through charm and wit, but extremely intelligent. The letters between her and Alexander Hamilton, so much of their discussion was helping him figure out the debt crisis. She influenced the creation of our country by using those relationships with Thomas Jefferson and with Alexander Hamilton, and they listened to her. Lin always says, she’s the smartest person in the show, the one whose brain works a million miles an hour. She is the one who knows the answer to the question that the audience doesn’t until the end of the play: who lives, who dies, who tells the story? That person is Eliza [Schuyler], and Angelica, I believe, is always very aware of the power of her sister.

When you google Angelica Schuyler, a picture of you shows up alongside the real one. How did it strike you to be an African American woman in 2015 playing this aristocratic white woman?

It didn’t strike me. To be creating work at that level, that struck me, but it didn’t strike me that she was a different race. It really didn’t. Just like you experienced the show from the inside out, you experience life from the inside out. As grateful as I am, as honored as I am, to get to be a Black woman, my experience in life is, I’m a woman, you know? There was so much I could relate to about this woman, even though I would not have had any of the opportunity that she did have in that time. That is never lost on me, which is why it’s so fantastic that my face comes up, because everything that you might believe separates me from her is a lie. And so if you see my face when you google her, perhaps on some level, you will be aware of that.

There’s obviously a reckoning happening right now around Founding Fathers, and American history being a lie of omission. But five years ago, Hamilton was pretty honest that guys like Thomas Jefferson enslaved people and were not the gods they’re made out to be. Is there satisfaction or pride that the show has been looking at history more accurately?

There is a responsibility to tell history more truthfully, and Hamilton is just the beginning of that journey. Absolutely, casting it with the colors of the rainbow, using all of our music, not just rap and hip-hop music, but all popular music, to tell the story. Most importantly, the ownership that all people should have over the founding of this country, how necessary every single person that was here was to make everything that’s great about this country and how necessary we all are to continue the work that is needed to make it what it said it wanted to be. What we still have an opportunity to do is to answer some questions and to figure out why statements that are so clear and so bold and so beautiful in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, why the definition of humanity is so clearly written, and yet gets so misinterpreted. We have a rightful place at the table for all of these conversations.

The show became so significant, culturally, in New York, and across the country. It also became a status symbol, and there was backlash about that. Did you feel any of that backlash?

It’s surprising how little backlash I felt. Normally things that are extremely popular, it’s like disco. They have a time, and then everyone wants to burn the records, and at some point they’ll discover it again. What’s probably most shocking about Hamilton is that I’ve been insulated from all of that. The leadership in this team, their hearts were really in the right place. They were very, very invested in giving as many people as possible access, even with the constraints of the size of the theater that we were in. Being a part of the Grammys was about getting access to the show. Now the streaming on Disney+ is all about giving access to the show. There’s always been a huge desire to not let this be something that is for the privileged. It’s for everybody.

There’s another live-action movie adaptation of Hamilton planned. Will you play Angelica in that version, and what’s the latest about that one?

Oh, my God, let me tell you, that would be my dream of dreams, to be in any version that ever happens. Lin has absolutely no current plans to do that. He has so many other projects right now, but I know in my heart that at some point they will do other live-action versions of this movie, and I know they’ll be genius. And if they call me to play Angelica, I don’t care how old I am, I will say ‘yes,’ and I will do it. But I also know because there are so many beautifully talented women who have gone on to play Angelica on Broadway and all over the world, that whoever gets the opportunity to play this role, is going to be as blessed as I am.

No, it can only be you. You won the Tony for best supporting actress in a musical for Hamilton. Where is the Tony now?

We have a big armoire in our living room, and on top of it is the Tony and the Grammy and a Drama Desk and a Lortel and every baseball trophy my son ever won. I pinch myself when I’m introduced in that way. I wake up in the morning and I have this beautiful family around me, but, you know, I don’t necessarily walk around looking or feeling like an award-winner. So, it’s a nice reminder.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

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