By MARK KENNEDY AP Entertainment Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — Christopher Jackson, one of the original cast members of the megahit Broadway musical “Hamilton,” is coming back to reprise his George Washington.
Jackson, who earned a Tony Award nomination playing opposite Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Alexander Hamilton, will return to the Richard Rodgers Theatre on Sept. 8 through Jan. 3.
“I wanted to touch the thing that I feel turned me into an artist in a way that nothing I’d ever done had done,” he tells The Associated Press. “I wanted it to touch this thing again.”
Jackson is the second original cast member to return, following Leslie Odom Jr., who reprised his Aaron Burr last year, pushing the show to the top of the box-office charts again and bringing in over $4 million in one week for the first time since 2018.
Jackson says he was inspired to return while reconnecting with his fellow actors during the 10th anniversary events last year.
“There’s a feeling of being alive in a different kind of way in this show. The timing was right and, quite honestly, I needed that infusion and that challenge again,” he says.
Before landing “Hamilton,” Jackson played Simba in “The Lion King,” Benny in “In the Heights” and Delray in “Memphis.” He also was in “After Midnight,” “Bronx Bombers” as Derek Jeter and “Holler If Ya Hear Me,” the musical that used Tupac Shakur songs. He was a composer and songwriter for the children’s television programs “The Electric Company” and “Sesame Street.”
After “Hamilton,” Jackson had a role in the CBS drama “Bull” and HBO Max’s “And Just Like That,” returned to Broadway in “Hell’s Kitchen” and “Freestyle Love Supreme,” and sang in the hit animated movie “Moana.”
“I haven’t stopped working since I left ‘Hamilton.’ I’ve been very fortunate,” Jackson says. “But there’s nothing that I have done that has challenged me in the way that show does.”
Jackson left the show in November 2016 after having been with “Hamilton” since it began performances in early 2015 off-Broadway. The Broadway show won 11 Tony Awards, including best new musical, best book and best score. The cast album was a blockbuster and the show has toured to packed houses.
Jackson calls the Richard Rodgers Theatre his “favorite building in New York” and the site of the “greatest, most profound artistic moments of my life. I want to see if I can go in there and have new ones.”
Many in the cast alongside Jackson were relatively unknown to the wider world when they hit the stage: Daveed Diggs, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Jonathan Groff, Okieriete Onaodowan, Anthony Ramos and Phillipa Soo. Even Miranda wasn’t yet a brand name.
Jackson — the subject of the song “Washington on Your Side” — will return to sing such songs as “Right Hand Man,” “History Has Its Eyes on You” and “Yorktown.”
He says he’ll have to recapture the muscle memory of the show but there are benefits, like that his children can see him play the role as young adults. Plus, he knows his way around the theater.
“I just don’t have to look for where the bathrooms are. I know where all the bathrooms are. I know how to get into the stage door. I know where to park, how long it takes me to go from Point A to Point B.”