Christopher Jackson, who plays George Washington in Hamilton, discusses his character in this clip from Hamilton’s America – the documentary film that brings history to vivid life through the lens of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s pop culture Broadway phenomenon Hamilton.
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TRANSCRIPT
Washington had been serving for forty-five years of his life and he wanted to return home and actually enjoy the fruits of the labor that he had invested in, in the building and the establishing of the government itself.
Washington is revered as the father of our country but our understanding of history goes awry when we only seek or care to listen to one part of a story.
From the moment I knew I was gonna be playing Washington that was the first thing that came into my mind -- the slave question.
The reality of the fact that he owned people.
I'll never make peace with it.
I try to -- til I stood in the slave quarters and there's no way to reconcile that.
If anything it brings to bear the entire truth of who this man was and some parts are ugly. Some parts are abhorrent but there's nothing that I can do to change those things and and there's nothing in my portrayal that would suggest that we forgive any of that.
