Los Angeles, CA – Actor Javier Muñoz is ready to replace Tony award-winner Lin-Manuel Miranda in the hit Broadway musical Hamilton. Last week producers announced that Muñoz, 40, will take over the role of Alexander Hamilton once Lin-Manuel departs the production on July 9th. Muñoz, who is in the production and is Miranda’s alternate (which means he is guaranteed regular performances) is now poised to take the role full on.
Muñoz was born and raised in Brooklyn of Puerto Rican parents, “We grew up relatively poor in a first-floor apartment with gates on every window. It was scary coming home,” Muñoz recalled.
In 2015, while performing in Hamilton, he was diagnosed with cancer.Muñoz kept his diagnosis to himself, telling only his parents about the illness, ” I had never been more scared in my life,”
In November of last year Muñoz took two months off from the production to undergo surgery and receive radiation treatment. Now he is poised to take on one of the most important and coveted roles on Broadway.
“There was no thought at all about [replacing him],” Thomas Kail, director of both Hamilton and In the Heights, told the New York Post. “Javi’s someone who has given so much. Now we wanted to make sure he had what he needed to be well, and to know he wasn’t alone.”
His credits include a rock opera version of Two Gentlemen of Verona, the musical Venice, Richard III and Into the Woods.
“I probably wouldn’t be in this business still without Lin-Manuel Miranda. He created the opportunities for me as a Latino actor to have the career that I have. They didn’t exist without him and before him, and so I think we all can share—all of us who go all the way back—that gratitude, right? And, it’s a bonding glue to always lift him up and embrace each other and support each other in that process,” Muñoz said.
Miranda received 2016 Tony Awards for Best Book and Best Score for his work on Hamilton. The show was nominated for a record 16 Tony Awards and won 11, including the top honor, Best Musical.
Here is an interview Cris Franco did when he went to N.Y. earlier this year and did an in-depth with Javier Muñoz:
Hamilton explores the life of the American founding father and first Secretary of the Treasury, as well as his experiences as an orphan of the British West Indies who immigrated to the 13 Colonies and helped shape the United States of America.
Hamilton is hitting the road with the tour scheduled to begin in San Francisco in March 2017 at the SHN Orpheum Theater, and to run there for 21 weeks; the Los Angeles production is scheduled to run from Aug. 11 to Dec. 30, 2017, at the Hollywood Pantages Theater. For more info: http://www.hamiltonbroadway.com/
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