Happy Hamilton Day!
Happy Hamilton Day! Social media couldn't get enough of Hamilton's big debut on Disney+ on Friday, when Lin-Manuel Miranda's Tony Award-winning musical hit the streaming platform.
The production was recorded at the Richard Rodgers Theatre with the original 2016 cast, which includes Leslie Odom Jr., Renée Elise Goldsberry, Daveed Diggs and more. Manuel's father, Luis Miranda, adorably tweeted a picture of his snacks ahead of Hamilton's Disney+ debut, writing, "I am getting up at 3am to see @HamiltonMusical and I know so many of you will have an 'orchestra' seat to @disneyplus showing."
Later, he shared personal throwback photos and reflected on Hamilton's incredible success.
"It has been a long journey since it all started in 2015 @PublicTheaterNY," he wrote. "Exciting at every step. Exhausting at times. @ltmphd & I are so humbled to get to share our boy @Lin_Manuel with the world #hamilfilm. Hope you enjoyed it as much as we did!"
On Friday, Ava DuVernay revisited her 2015 tweet when she first saw Hamilton, and said she was "dazzled" by it.
"Throwback to my first tweet about #Hamilton after seeing off-Broadway about a month after it opened at The Public," she wrote. "Seen several times since, and I always feel the same as the first night. Tonight was no exception. Brava @Lin_Manuel and each beautiful artist who touched this gem."
She later defended Miranda against critics who accused Hamilton of being a "feel-good" story and a "falsification of history."
"As artists, we should be free to say and make what we want," she wrote in part. "There are films I despise. Hate. But the artist has the right to make it. And I have the right to find value or no value, be ambivilant, apathetic, critique or praise. As for #Hamilton, big praise from me."
Meanwhile, Jimmy Fallon tweeted his excitement on Friday.
"Happy Hamilton Day!!! I wish I could see it AGAIN for the first time," he wrote. "What an amazing experience? Congrats to @Lin_Manuel, Tommy Kail, @LacketyLac and the cast of @HamiltonMusical. The world is watching!! You changed the game. #Hamilfilm #HamiltonFilm."
Hamilton's Twitter account responded with a throwback video of Miranda rapping backstage with an overjoyed Fallon.
Josh Gad also emotionally shared his personal memories of the musical.
"The first time I saw #Hamilton on stage at the #PublicTheater I knew absolutely nothing about what I was in for," he recalled. "My college classmate @leslieodomjr had told me briefly over the years that he was working on something with @Lin_Manuel that was unlike anything else that had ever been done. The stage is a resoivoir for overhyped products, so I didn’t quite know what to expect other than an explosion of talent based on the cast involved I already knew."
"The lights lowered, I put my playbill aside and at intermission turned to my friends, also in the audience that night, @MarkRuffalo and his amazing wife Sunny and said what would become a familiar phrase out of my mouth from that point on, "'Hamilton' is the most inspired piece of art I've ever seen,'" he continued. "Over the course of the next 2 years, I was blessed enough to experience the sensation 5 times and every time, it felt like a religious experience. ... But perhaps most astounding was the revelation of knowing that in my generation, there was a young man by the name of @Lin_Manuel who despite already creating one opus in #InTheHeights had created a masterpiece that would be studied, dissected, seen my millions and pave the way for a new generation of artists who would be inspired to follow in his footsteps."
Gad also pointed out the timeliness of Hamilton's Disney+ debut.
"I am beyond thrilled that I not only get to share this enormous piece of entertainment with my children tomorrow but that I, along with millions of others can seize each word and lyric as an opportunity to reflect on our own history in the making and 'rise up' to the moment we all find ourselves in now," he wrote.
On a more lighthearted note, some fans poked fun at Hamilton's infamously high ticket prices, and that Disney+ subscribers now get to see it from the comfort of their own homes.
Check out more reactions from both celebrities and fans below:
ET recently spoke to Miranda, who shared why his musical is so relevant today.
"My only real insight in writing the show was all of the problems and paradoxes and fights present at the founding that are still here," Miranda said. "I was pulling from contemporary language over the same fights, and that includes the original sin of slavery, that includes systemic racism, that includes gun control."
"The thing about Hamilton is because it brushes up against the founding of this country, it hits differently depending on where we are as a country," he continued. "There are lines about slavery, there are lines about how little the founders did that hit different now than they did in 2016, than they did under Obama versus under Trump. Because it deals with issues at the root, like, it's always gonna be relevant in some form."
Watch the video below for more:
RELATED CONTENT:
