Fan landed a part

less subtly, carried around with him Hamilton: The Revolution, the book written by Miranda, with Jeremy McCarter, including the music and an annotated libretto.

During a break from filming a big Dirty Dancing number, Johnson sat down at the piano and started to bang out the opening chords to Alexander Hamilton, the play’s first song. “I just went for it,” he said. Blankenbuehler walked over and began to perform the accompanying choreography. (Hyland caught some of the action on video.)

“He played all the roles,” Blankenbuehler said.

“It was a classic, perfect audition, even though it wasn’t even an audition.”

He arranged for Johnson to try out for the producers of Hamilton.

All this was before Johnson finally saw the play (his first time seeing a Broadway show), which finally happened about a week before it would win 11 Tony Awards. “It was lit,” he said. He bought a souvenir, the A.HAM baseball cap.

After Dirty Dancing, Johnson went back to Texas to contemplate his future while shooting the AMC series The Son, starring Pierce Brosnan. Then Linklater cast Johnson alongside Steve Carell, Bryan Cranston and Laurence Fishburne in his new film, Last Flag Flying, a sort-of sequel to the 1973 Jack Nicholson vehicle, The Last Detail.

Last Flag Flying rehearsed in Los Angeles, where Johnson was asked to audition again for Hamilton, this time performing the part of Hercules Mulligan/James Madison. He was summoned back two days later to be seen by the director and musical director. “It is the callback,” Johnson recalled, having by now strolled out of Central Park and onto Broadway, where he wove through pedestrians, only losing pace when a street saxophone player caught his ear.

“They have me sing the Hercules Mulligan parts,” Johnson said. “Then they ask me to do Lafayette and Jefferson.” Then they asked him to sing more. Johnson suggested Stevie Wonder’s Knocks Me Off My Feet. The show’s musical director, Alex Lacamoire, began playing it on the piano.

“Alex does a perfect audition cut of it off the top of his head and we’re all just vibing,” Johnson said. “It no longer feels like an audition.”

Johnson received an official email alerting him that he was under consideration for the touring cast of the play, which is in San Francisco and will open in Los Angeles later this summer.

Then there was silence, weeks of it. He was back in Texas, packing up to head to Pittsburgh to shoot Last Flag Flying.

Then he got a call from his agent. “How would you like to make your Broadway debut in Hamilton?” she asked him.

“I was like, that’d be great, but it seems like kind of an irrelevant question,” he said, with a laugh, and then headed into a rehearsal for Hamilton.