John Krasinski reunites the original cast of Hamilton to the delight of one 9-year-old kid
We’re already on record as being in favor of John Krasinki’s good-news-only YouTube series. Remember this cool interview with Steve Carell? That was a week/27 years ago. So how, when one is John Krasinski and is (as he says in the video) already exhausted from home-schooling his kids, do you top a first episode like that?
Well, you ask your wife to help you pull off a massive flex and call in the entire original cast of Hamilton, that’s how.
The second episode is as charming as the first, featuring more encouraging stories about people being decent and kind (in this edition, the focus is largely on teachers and parents). Krasinki also gets a new theme song from one viewer and showcases a few “copyright infringers” who delivered Some Good News broadcasts of their own. (Also, De Niro does the weather.)
But the main event is Krasinki’s Zoom call with nine-year-old Aubrey, who was meant to see Hamilton this week and watched Mary Poppins Returns instead. She’s clearly already processed whatever sad feelings that missed chance may have stirred up and just wanted to watch Lin-Manuel Miranda do something, so she dialed up MPR. Krasinski then brings out wife (and Mary Poppins herself) Emily Blunt, who pretends to take issue with Aubrey’s Miranda fandom.
The Blunt-Krasinki household then promises Aubrey that they’ll fly her to New York to see the show and then promptly make that gift an afterthought, when Lin-Manuel Miranda Zoom-bombs the call and brings Leslie Odom Jr., Anthony Ramos (star of the will-come-out-eventually In The Heights), Daveed Diggs, Christopher Jackson, Okieriete Onaodowan, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Phillipa Soo, Jasmine Cephas Jones, and the rest of the ensemble (it’s a lot of people). It even includes Jonathan Groff who, since he played King George in Hamilton, is basically just in the chorus here.
It is very charming and cool and they’re all extremely dreamy. We’ve cued the segment up here, but if it doesn’t work, skip to around 11:20:
Who else can do a Zoom concert? Can we get Victor Garber to assemble the Playwrights Horizons cast of Assassins? Could Rachel Leigh Cook pull together a Josie and the Pussycats performance? Can we even stop the cast of Glee from doing this kind of thing?
Anyway, we look forward to seeing how Krasinki will top this in his next episode. Maybe he and Blunt can stage a live trailer for the delayed A Quiet Place 2? Surely they have some sort of basement- or shed-like structure and a bathtub.
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