What's up, guys? Leslie Robbins here for Young Hollywood at the Pantages Theater. About to take you behind the scenes of the Broadway phenomenon, Hamilton. Take my shot.

I am not throwing away my shot. My name is Michael Luwoye. I play Alexander Hamilton. As most people know, he is the $10 founding father of America. You know.

This is the job to have of the moment. Correct. Yes. And I love the fact you were getting ready for your other gig when you found out about this gig.

Correct. So I I auditioned in my catering clothes, my setup clothes for my catering job.

So talk about your audition.

I got to audition for the creative team a bunch. I got to audition for Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Stop.

Yeah, five minutes before my audition, he just walked in the room and I was like, Is that that's that's him. All right. Um, okay, well, let's still do the audition. And if you just bring the camera back over here or just move her chair altogether. Well, I can tell that you're having fun being part of Hamilton. Let's talk about this phenomenon. You are part of probably the greatest show to come to Broadway. Now it's here in LA. What's that experience been like? You come from Broadway.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Being a part of the original Broadway company and then doing the show in Chicago and now coming here. It's it like hasn't gotten old and it's still every city brings a new energy and a new excitement. LA is the best. It makes me a happier person. So to be here and to be doing a show that I think is just not just amazing, I think it's just very important for right now. We talk about all the time. It's overwhelming because there's a sense of like every day we do the show, we know that it's a majority of the audience is the first time seeing Hamilton. And with all the hype and all of this stuff around it, it's a it's an immense amount of pressure. But you got to put you got to put that in the back of your brain and do the show. People love to like romanticize it, but this is our 9 to 5. This is how we pay our bills. And so our job is to yes, feel the excitement and the love and the warmth from each city, but at the end of the day, we shut that down and our job is just to tell the story and do the job. So it it's wonderful to feel the love and support and then at the same time it's like, okay, I got to go do my job now. I want them to have the best experience they can. And so that's why we all literally give 110% every time we do the show. We have no other option. I am not going to take my shot. I am not going to take my shot. I am not going to take my shot. I am not going to take my shot.

Because you're the director and you have all these Tony awards surrounding Hamilton. I read somewhere that if you're not seen and people don't know about you, you've done your job. Is that really true?

Wow, you really have uh, you've you've investigated the the art of directing.

I know everything about you.

My feeling is I'm trying to empower and create an environment where people can do their best work. I know for me all I thought about was the task at hand, which was, okay, how to take this amazing music that Lin is composing and what is my contribution to it? And then what was wonderful about the process is that the work was at such a high level that he was writing, it allowed us to bring our best selves to it. And that's all I ever really thought about. It's just making this the best thing that I could make it.

What's it like being in the eye of the storm? How do you even qualify or qualify it?

It's it's it's unlike anything I've ever been a part of. There's been nothing like this that I've seen in the musical theater cannon that I know of in musical recent musical theater history or just history period like anything like that. There's there's been nothing like this. And so this whole experience has been unique, it's been fresh, it's still exciting and surprising to me. I hope that it doesn't stop. You feel like you're a part of something that's making waves, that's changing the world. And you know, we're the third iteration of this show and I'm so I think I can speak for all of us, like we're all really, really proud of this cast. We really feel like a family and like to be able to to build it from the ground up was is such an honor. It's it's amazing.

What's the strangest request you've gotten to get tickets?

My favorite ticket story is I was on a plane from New York to Dallas, and this woman was sitting in front of me and she was about 80 years old, and she had a biography a theater biography. And I was like, oh, is that book good? And she's like, yeah, I'm just going back to Dallas. I was just in New York for a week and I entered the lottery every day, but I could never get a ticket for Hamilton. And I didn't say who I was. I just wrote down my email address and I got her tickets for the show. And then she came back to New York like six months later and saw the show and and sent me a really beautiful email and so it's just amazing that people just love the theater and they love um artistic things. They want it to be in their life and and that means a lot to us.