Hamilton star Daveed Diggs said he got a career boost from a canny manager who used the Broadway smash hit to help him connect with Hollywood players.
Diggs told The Hollywood Reporter that he got a new manager when Hamilton moved from off-Broadway to Broadway. The manager disbursed his complimentary tickets with the condition the recipients would meet Diggs afterward, he said.
"I thought it sounded like the ravings of a lunatic. Like, it's a play," he said. "But her black-market ticket exchange is how I met Tina Fey and Kenya Barris and all these people who'd eventually give me jobs. And it was because she'd set these meetings for after the show, and people were so intoxicated by it. It was the craziest thing I'd ever seen."
Through those connections, Diggs landed a recurring role in Season 3 of the Netflix comedy Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, which Fey co-created and executive produced. He also appeared in a recurring role in black-ish, which Barris created and executive produced. The attention brought offers for movies and endorsements, and breathed life into a 10-year-old script he co-wrote with Rafael Casal, which led to his starring in the 2018 film Blindspotting.
Thanks to Hamilton, Diggs won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical in 2016 for the dual roles of Thomas Jefferson and Marquis de Lafayette. The cast album also netted him a Grammy Award in 2016.
Directed by Thomas Kail, Hamilton stars Lin-Manuel Miranda, Daveed Diggs, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Leslie Odom, Jr., Christopher Jackson, Jonathan Groff, Phillipa Soo, Jasmine Cephas Jones, Anthony Ramos, Okieriete Onaodowan and more. The recorded performance is now streaming exclusively on Disney+.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter