Coming out on July 3 on Disney 3 is Hamilton, the filmed version of the original Broadway production.

Directed by Thomas Kail, “Hamilton,” is the 11-time-Tony Award®-, GRAMMY Award®-, Olivier Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning stage musical produced by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Jeffrey Seller and Kail.

Filmed at The Richard Rodgers Theatre on Broadway in June of 2016, “Hamilton” features Tony Award® winners Lin-Manuel Miranda as Alexander Hamilton; Daveed Diggs as Marquis de Lafayette/Thomas Jefferson; Renée Elise Goldsberry as Angelica Schuyler; Leslie Odom, Jr. as Aaron Burr; Tony Award nominees Christopher Jackson as George Washington; Jonathan Groff as King George; Phillipa Soo as Eliza Hamilton; and Jasmine Cephas Jones as Peggy Schuyler/Maria Reynolds; Okieriete Onaodowan as Hercules Mulligan/James Madison; and Anthony Ramos as John Laurens/Philip Hamilton.

The cast also includes Carleigh Bettiol, Ariana DeBose, Hope Easterbrook, Sydney James Harcourt, Sasha Hutchings, Thayne Jasperson, Elizabeth Judd, Jon Rua, Austin Smith, Seth Stewart and Ephraim Sykes.

For Goldsberry, who won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical, this is the second time she’s had one of her Broadway productions filmed for a bigger audience. Over ten years ago, she starred in the last Broadway production of Rent. While many may know her from her TV roles on The Good Wife and One Life to Live, they will best associate her with Angelica Schuyler after they see Hamilton.

BlackFilmandTV spoke exclusively with Goldsberry on her thoughts of the musical being shown to a larger audience during this pandemic crisis.

When did you find out that it was gonna go to Disney plus as opposed to theaters?

Renée Elise Goldsberry: Five minutes before the world found out really. They sent us an email letting us know that Lin was going to go on Good Morning America and announced that the film was going to stream on Disney Plus as opposed to coming out in October of 2021.

What are your thoughts on its early release?

Renée Elise Goldsberry: I did think I would have a little little bit more time. Any kind of issues I had to sanity about what I looked like would be taken care of by the fact that I would be about seventy years old when it came out. And I'd be like, "you looked good back then." So that that actually didn't happen. It hasn't been enough time. In that sense, I will still be probably pretty hard at myself in that way. But I'm so excited that they make really great choices. The people that produce the show, they’re extremely smart people. They always confounded me with their ability to analyze and move at the right time. Surprising always, but I've never yet been disappointed. They didn't even know when they made this decision, what the world will look like on July 3. We don't know what's in store. If there's anything we've learned in the last few months is that we don't know. So I'm grateful though, that we're supporting work. We’re speaking and standing behind a piece of work that has the kind of universal themes that are relevant and necessary no matter what comes and I just saw the movie and I'm confident that this is the right time.

Was that the first time you saw yourself in the movie?

Renée Elise Goldsberry: The first time I've seen any image of this film? Yes.

This is the second time that you've done a Broadway production that's been filmed for an audience. When you did Rent on Broadway, that was also filmed for an audience and hit theaters.

Renée Elise Goldsberry: I did. Jeffrey Seller, who was one of the producers of Rent, had a brilliant idea of “Let's close this with a big party and let's film it." And so we filmed the closing night of Rent and I was blessed enough to be cast as Mimi in that production. I knew that smart people, really good filmmakers that loved the theater, had finally really found a way to capture some of the magic that happens on the live stage. The entire time I was in Hamilton, my prayer was that they would film it and my dreams came true.

This is a great time for it to be shown because as we know, Broadway is not going to come back till next year. The Broadway community needs a boost for people to know why they love Broadway and why they like to see a show. If you're going to see a show, let it be this. This will remind people why they love the theater.

Renée Elise Goldsberry: Absolutely. I don't know that anybody loves theater more than Thomas Kail, which is crucial, because I think the reason why I love Rent: Filmed Live on Broadway is because I could tell that the film director studied the show and knew it. We wanted to make sure you knew it as intimately as Michael Greif, the theater director. And so in Tommy Kail, we do have somebody who knows and understands both mediums and loves them both. We can bring this wonderful piece of theater and our love of theater into people's homes in a time when we need to remember how good it is to be able to huddle in rooms together and see ourselves, see the good and the bad and really grapple with what we need to do to love each other and to save this world. That's an opportunity that we all get on July 3 with this particular show.

Looking back, you've done other Broadway productions, but when did you know that this one would be a special production than the ones you had done before?

Renée Elise Goldsberry: I knew when I saw In The Heights that there was a storyteller that was bringing my music to the theater using the music that I grew up with, to tell the stories of diverse people. So the first time I heard the demo of Satisfied from Lin-Manuel Miranda, I think he did it on a drum machine in his apartment. I knew that the world was changed and that this was another level of storytelling that I desperately needed in the world. Ever since then, that first insight has been affirmed in every step of the game.

Do you remember the first time you were getting bombarded for tickets?

Renée Elise Goldsberry: That's a good question. Actually, when we did the workshop, it was hard to get a ticket. That was even before the Off-Broadway production., It was exciting that everybody was trying to get into see Hamilton very early. It was also sad because we always wanted it to be available to everybody. If there's something that's good, you want everyone to be able to have it. If there's something that you're proud of, you want to be able to share it with everybody. That's actually been the only challenge that we've been constantly fighting; how to make it accessible, specifically to the black community. What's crazy about black shows is that the journey that you have to take when it comes from New York theater to get to that audience seems like you got to go through a lot of people that might not be their story. It might not be their music. The miracle is that we went through a very, very savvy and a very elite theatre community. They got it and they embraced it. We kept going and going and going and going and going. Our hope is that when it's on television, there are people that don't ever come to New York or any of the cities where the show has been or maybe have not heard anything about this, but they might stumble upon this and see themselves on stage and see themselves as the creators of this country.

How excited was it that you were able to end Ham for Ham with “Congratulations”?

Renée Elise Goldsberry: Oh, my gosh. So what's been really fun with this big rally of social media that we've all been so dependent on through this quarantine is just being reminded by people reposting some of those Ham for Ham moments. We had a party on the street. We really did. It was a genius move to try to find some way to give all those people that showed up for a lottery ticket. When almost everybody was going to leave disappointed, we wanted to find some way to share some of the magic, some of our joy with them and receive some of that love before they went on. Most importantly, for us to direct them to other shows that were happening so that they could go see. I marveled for a long time, when I look back at that street and how densely packed it was at that time, and then in the spring, when that same street was just desolate and bear, and now that it's filled with protesters, it's a crazy time that our normal keeps changing. I believe that great art will guide us through the changes.

At some point theater will come back. What would be a role that you come back to?

Renée Elise Goldsberry: Especially now I'm interested in telling the stories of women of color. I stumbled into this opportunity to use acting as a gift of service in the sense that it's an opportunity to attract people to bring someone to life that was there that whoever picked your history lesson didn't tell you about. So my prayer and with all the work that we're trying to do across all mediums, and now specifically in the theater, as black theater leaders in the theater are coming together and asking the theatre community to grow and to change in the ways that are desperately needed and even more inclusive in terms of all that. I'm excited about the fruit that will yield and the opportunity to sing out loud the voices of my ancestors.