Lin-Manuel Miranda Says Hamilton “Hits Different Depending on Where We Are as a Country”

As Lin-Manuel Miranda put it, Hamilton “always has something to say about the moment”—including the one we’re currently living in. 

While chatting remotely with Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show, the Tony winner and man behind the hit Broadway musical reflected on how the show relates to these current times.

“So much of the show is about legacy and how you can’t control it—you can only make what you make and do what you do and the rest is really not up to you,” Miranda told Fallon. “And, so, I’m incredibly proud when I see ‘This is not a moment, it’s a movement’ or ‘History has its eyes on you’ at a Black Lives Matter protest.”

The performer continued, “What’s weird about the show is because it brushes up against sort of the origins of our country, it just hits different depending on where we are as a country.” As an example, he recalled seeing Hamilton in London while Brexit was happening. 

“Seeing King George singing like ‘What Comes Next?’—you could feel the audience be like, ‘Ughhhh, what does come next?'” he described. “Because it brushes up against this origin story, because it’s the story of the one immigrant among the founders, like, it always has something to say about the moment because we’re constantly dealing with the past and, if this moment is any indication, like, we’re never done with the past, we’re never done with the sins of the founders, we’re never done with the flaws, the contradictions in the founding.”