Directing ‘Hamilton’
Thomas Kail talks about his Pittsburgh ties, Disney film and spit
Thomas Kail is the director of two Tony-winning musicals, including “In the Heights,” whose film adaptation has been moved from this summer to 2021.
Certainly you’ve heard of the other. “Hamilton,” Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Pulitzer Prize-winning musical and winner of 11 Tony Awards, began streaming a week ago on Disney+. In a phone interview, the director of both stage and screen versions discussed the “Hamilton” phenomenon, his Pittsburgh family ties and Jonathan Groff’s spit.
“I’m proud to talk about the 412,” Kail said.
The Virginia native understands the ties that bind Pittsburghers to their hometown. His mother, Wendy Green, grew up on Beechwood Boulevard in Squirrel Hill. His grandmother moved from the area two years ago, and he still has an uncle here.
“I hardly claim to be a Pittsburgher, but I do know that once a Pittsburgher, it’s in there.”
Kail also is well aware of all of the local connections in the casts he has worked with, including “the great Renee Elise Goldsberry,” the Tony-winning Angelica Schuyler of “Hamilton.” “Carnegie Mellon should name a school after her, at least a wing.”
Another CMU grad, Rory O’Malley, was playing the role of King George when it was decided, in 2016, that the musical would be recorded as a film, with as many original cast members as possible. Over the two days of recording the show, O’Malley stepped aside for Groff, who has his own Pittsburgh story, as the lead in the Netflix series “Mindhunter.”
Groff’s performance in “Hamilton” as the mad king provides a big dose of irony and humor. Then there’s the matter of his, um, spit. It’s what happens when the actor projects, and it has inspired thousands of mentions on social media. It’s shown in extreme close-up in the film.
“I did not know that the internet would be so excited about Jonathan Groff’s expectoration,” Kail said with a smile in his voice. “It felt to me like this entire endeavor was about trying to memorialize and honor this show and this company. If you looked at all the takes that we had from Jonathan, that was not the least amount, and it was definitely not the most that he would do. But it felt like an amount that was indicative and representative of how he performs.
“I wanted to offer that to posterity. This is what it’s like when Jonathan Groff played the king, because that’s what it was like for the hundreds of times he had done it before. It just felt like it was telling the truth.”
Although this was Kail’s first time
at the helm of a film, he has a special program Emmy for “Grease Live” on Fox and a nomination for the awardwinning “Fosse/Verdon” on FX. The miniseries starred his wife, Michelle Williams; the couple welcomed a baby in June.
Here’s more on “Hamilton”:
Q. The movie was supposed to be released in theaters in October 2021, but then COVID-19 shut everything down. How did you feel when Disney, which owns the distribution rights, wanted to stream it?
A. They are incredible partners. We had lots of deep conversations ... about what would be the best moment to put the film out in this new way, and when we saw the opportunity, then that’s what we did.
Q. You filmed it thinking it was going to appear on a movie screen. Was there a concern with how it would play on smaller screens?
A. It wasn’t for me because ... eventually it’s going to be watched on someone’s device, no matter what .... I just wanted to make it excellent, whether you were watching it on your phone, a 12-inch screen or on a television screen.
Q. The stage has turntables and different levels and is relatively small. How difficult was it just figuring out how that would work?
A. I found it really exciting. Declan Quinn was our [director of photography]. We had some decent amount of prep time .… Obviously, I knew the show pretty well at that point, and I knew where we wanted to be. We talked to my choreographer, Andy Blankenbuehler, about certain numbers and our thoughts to make sure that we were all on the same page. But you also have to just take the leap and go and capture . ... For the most part, their instincts were so excellent and they were so locked in that it was very rare that we had to adjust anything on the fly.
Q: What did you do when the film debuted on Disney+? Did you watch while the cast was livetweeting the event that night?
A. I’ve only watched parts of it [on Disney+]. I watched it a lot in the lead-up to it. I’m not on social media, so I was only vaguely aware of what was happening. [The next day], I went online to see what people were talking about from the cast. I was just so happy to see them all together, even though virtually.
There was something very moving for me watching this original company come together. We did a Zoom a couple of weeks ago. They’ve been staying in really close touch . ... We spent such an intense period of time together. It was really a moment when being in the theater was the calmest place for so many of us, because outside there was so much activity and interest and excitement about the show.
But at least with the show, for those two hours and 47 minutes including intermission, you knew exactly where you were supposed to be. You knew what your job
Q. No matter how many people saw it onstage, the audience on Disney+ may dwarf that number. Downloads of the app went up 72% that week. So how does it feel that it’s out there in the universe?
A. I’m just so pleased that the company is proud of the thing that we all made. I really wanted them to love it. We made it as a love letter to them, as a love letter to theater . ... The fact that they also could step outside and not watch just the show, but watch their filmed performance in the show, was a real rarity in the theater. You make a thing and then the curtain goes down, and it disappears . ... There’s something very gratifying about the knowledge that this exists, and will always exist.
Q. The National Theatre in London films most of its productions for future viewing, much in the way you’ve done “Hamilton.” Do you hope that maybe in the future we’ll see this as a regular thing for Broadway productions?
A. Anything that celebrates live performance and also creates a new generation of theatergoers, I’m in favor of .... My hope is people who see this ‘Hamilton film,’ it inspires them to want to go see anything live, whether it’s in their community, or in their city, or they come to Broadway, or go to the West End.
I think it remains to be seen, once we know when theater is coming back, what that landscape looks like. I’m certainly proud that we are part of the lineage, and that our show is hopefully not just for “Hamilton” fans, but for fans of theater everywhere who ... are not able to go to a place right now that’s really important to them. We wanted to try to re-create that place and bring it directly to them.