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'Hamilton' Is Rated PG-13 On Disney+, And Lin-Manuel Miranda Explains The F-Bomb Count

Hamilton rating
By Ben Pearson

When Disney acquired the filmed version of the 11-time-Tony Award-, Grammy Award-, Olivier Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning stage musical Hamilton that was recorded with the original Broadway cast, we wondered whether the end result would be censored by the family-friendly studio. Creator/star Lin-Manuel Miranda has addressed this topic before, but now he's back with more specifics about the Hamilton rating of PG-13, explaining how what the movie version will do when it gets to a use of the word "f***."

But now, with the movie about to debut directly on Disney+ next week, Miranda has addressed the Hamilton rating directly.

Hamilton is set to debut directly on Disney+ next week, and at the end of the recently-revealed trailer, eagle-eyed fans noticed that the film version received a PG-13 rating. Miranda jumped on Twitter to explain why:

The interesting thing here is that Miranda says there are three F-bombs in this show. In the original cast recording, there are only two – the ones he mentions in that second tweet. There are also a couple of instances where the word "f***" is censored for comedic effect: a character says "fuuuuuu..." after learning a pivotal piece of information but is cut off before he can finish the word, and there's one moment when Hamilton refers to John Adams as a "fat motherf***stick," but it's bleeped in the actual show itself.

As for that mysterious third "f***," I have a theory about that. Spoilers for Hamilton ahead. (Even if you've listened to the album a million times, you may want to stop reading now or skip to the end of the article. You've been warned.)

If there is indeed a third full F-bomb in the Hamilton movie, I suspect it might be included in the Laurens Interlude, a section of the show that was specifically left out of the cast recording in which Alexander Hamilton finds out that his friend John Laurens has been killed in battle. In 2016, Miranda wrote about why he didn't include this in the album:

I made a decision not to record this scene on the album, for two reasons 1) It really is more of a scene than a song, the only SCENE in our show, and I think its impact is at its fullest in production form. 2) As someone who grew up ONLY listening to cast albums (we ain't have money for a lot of Broadway shows, like most people) those withheld moments were REVELATIONS to me when I finally experienced them onstage, years later. Hamilton is sung through, and I wanted to have at least ONE revelation in store for you. I stand by the decision, and I think the album is better for it.

You can check out an animatic of the scene below:

While there's no F-bomb in that version, I wouldn't be surprised if Miranda ad-libbed one after Hamilton learns about Laurens' death. It would be the kind of powerful emotional moment that makes using the word f*** "worth it," in a sense. That's speculation on my part, but it's seemingly backed up by Miranda's response to someone on Twitter:

Miranda has previously addressed the idea of censoring Hamilton for Disney+, saying, "If we have to mute a word here or there to reach the largest audience possible, I'm OK with that, because your kids already have the original language memorized. I don't think we're depriving anyone of anything if we mute an f-bomb here or there to make our rating."

Hamilton begins streaming on Disney+ on July 3, 2020.

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