One week after reuniting with Steve Carell and generating more than 12 million views on YouTube for his nascent, quasi-late-night show, Some Good News, John Krasinski was back with an even bigger group homecoming: Lin-Manuel Miranda and the entire original cast of Hamilton.
Miranda, Leslie Odom Jr., Daveed Diggs, Phillipa Soo, Christopher Jackson, Anthony Ramos, Renee Elise Goldsberry, Okieriete Onaodowan, Jasmine Cephas Jones, Jonathan Groff, and Javier Muñoz, among other company players, all performed the musical's opening number, “Alexander Hamilton,” via Zoom for a young fan who was forced to cancel her plans to see Hamilton because of the coronavirus pandemic.
As part of his show, Krasinski interviewed a 9-year-old named Aubrey—who, in lieu of going to New York to see Hamilton for the first time, had watched Mary Poppins Returns, which co-starred Miranda and features Emily Blunt, Krasinski's wife, in the title role. For the first surprise, Blunt appeared alongside Krasinski to unleash a bunch of solid burns on Miranda. “He is in it, he's not the best part of it, obviously. Clearly, I'm the best of part it,” she joked. After Miranda popped into the call to surprise Aubrey, Blunt deadpanned, “She's here to see Mary Poppins, not Jack the Lamplighter.” (Where is her faux late-night show?)
But the headline was the Hamilton reunion. It's the first time the group had appeared together with Groff since April 2016. (The majority of the main cast began leaving in July of that year.) Thanks for getting the band back together, Diggs wrote on Twitter while promoting the clip.
Throughout our current global health crisis, Miranda has been a reliable presence and content creator. He appeared on the second episode of Jimmy Fallon's at-home version of The Tonight Show after the host restarted his show following a brief hiatus, was a guest on Rosie O'Donnell's one-night-only return of The Rosie O'Donnell Show to support The Actors Fund, and even dropped a previously unreleased track from Hamilton.
For Hamilton fans, the reunion is also a tease of what's to come. Earlier this year, Disney announced that it will release a filmed version of Hamilton that was recorded with the original Broadway cast in 2016. That project remains on the schedule for Oct. 15, 2021, and thus far hasn't been affected by the numerous delays forced by the coronavirus pandemic.
“We filmed the show with the original cast the week before the beginning cast members began to leave the show,” Miranda told Variety earlier this year. “What I’m most excited about is there will be a point at which, you all have that friend who brags, I saw it with the original cast. We’re stealing that brag from everyone. Because you’re all going to see it with the original cast.”
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