Daveed Diggs Almost Quit Hamilton After Hearing Leslie Odom Jr. Sing

After many years of hearing the "Hamilton" ensemble sing "I am not throwing away my shot," Leslie Odom Jr. clearly took that mantra to heart. Since winning acclaim (and a Tony) for his role as Aaron Burr, the triple-threat performer has not slowed down. For 2020's "One Night In Miami," he earned two Oscar nods and has since starred in films like the "Sopranos" prequel "The Many Saints of Newark" and Rian Johnson's "Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery." But how exactly did Odom Jr. come to fill the role that would put him front and center on a Broadway stage?

Leslie Odom Jr. has been seen onscreen since 2003 and on stage even longer. At just 17 years old, he was cast in "Rent," prompting him to leave high school a year early for the Broadway production. But given the option to remain onstage, Odom chose to leave for college — which earned him a verbal lashing from the show's casting director. In his 2021 profile from Esquire, he recounted the words hurled his way: "'How dare you? You don't walk away. I'll see you in five years when you're waiting tables.'"

If that casting director did see him five years later, it's probably because they were watching TV. After college and a couple more onstage performances, Odom Jr. headed to Los Angeles and jumped between one-off stints on notable TV shows — "Gilmore Girls," "Grey's Anatomy," and "Supernatural." And then came something big: he landed a series regular role in "Smash," the NBC musical series about, of all things, Broadway.

Sadly, the series only lasted two seasons. When it came to a close, Leslie Odom Jr. stuck around in New York City for the theater scene. Eventually, he found himself in a small black-box theater at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, watching a workshop with a very strange concept: from the creator of "In The Heights" came "Hamilton," a hip-hop musical about America's founding fathers, in which all major roles were played by BIPOC actors.

It was the fall of 2013 when Odom Jr. got the invite to attend the reading: it was a small, informal gathering of actors. In a folding chair in the third row of the audience, Odom had no idea that this musical would change his life. He wasn't even reading as part of the cast! At the time, all the roles were filled by creator Lin Manuel Miranda's frequent collaborators. But three months later, Miranda had worked out the second act of the musical and made the role of Burr so much more vocally demanding that he needed to recast it. Leslie Odom Jr., he figured, would be the perfect guy for the job.

I think it's safe to say that Miranda has solid instincts. Odom Jr. jumped at the opportunity and was more than prepared when the workshop rolled around. In fact, he was so prepared that he almost scared off another member of the original Broadway cast. Daveed Diggs (who originated the dual role of Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson) told Esquire that he nearly quit when he first heard Odom sing as Burr. "I was like, 'That's something I had never experienced before,'" says Diggs. "'That guy's voice is not real. His instrument is so finely tuned.' I remember being like, 'Oh, I probably shouldn't be here. That's not right.'"

Try not to imagine the dark alternate reality where Daveed Diggs doesn't bring his inhuman rapping speed to "Hamilton." If you've heard Odom Jr. sing, then you probably get where he's coming from. Odom Jr. has an impeccable pair of pipes, and the accolades to prove it. Diggs, of course, absolutely belonged in that room and played his roles to perfection too. That's a huge part of the "Hamilton" magic, after all. The stacked cast of performers all had the chops to elevate the material.

For Odom Jr, that call from Lin Manuel Miranda was a dream come true. A role like Aaron Burr — the complicated social striver and "villain" of Hamilton's story who is layered with depth — doesn't come around often. He gets handed some of the most meaningful moments in the show. As Burr, Odom Jr. had the chance to own the night's biggest showstopper, "The Room Where It Happens," and lay his soul bare with "Dear Theodosia." And for a Black Broadway-bred actor, that's no small offer. In a 2016 NY Times profile, he said:

"As a black actor, I can just tell you that I saw the potential to turn what is expected of us so often on its head. We're oftentimes asked to stop the show, or to make 'em laugh, but we're very rarely asked for vulnerability, very rarely asked for complication."

To say it was a success would be an understatement. Odom brought his all to the workshop and it showed. So as "Hamilton" made the jump from workshop to off-Broadway to the Richard Rodgers theater (and even to Disney+), there was no question about who would fill the role of Aaron Burr.