>> and from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." the charlie: how is it to be been in this house? lin-manuel: very normal. i live a few blocks away. i have been here since i was one-year-old. charlie: this is a house of memories. lin-manuel: it is. it was a laboratory for me. i have found so many action movies where we are sitting.

i have found so many animated movies with them i g.i. joe characters. i was a kid carrying around a camera. my ad had one of those big over the shoulder camcorders and brought it home. charlie: did you think you might be a director? lin-manuel: i did. spielberg doesn't get you far in school. i kind of figured out who i was socially by doing a school play. i got cast in the six grade play. does that just happen? -- is it that one kid wants to do those things? what was it in you that made you want to do those things because those are the things you do. lin-manuel: isn't that incredible that we get to do what we love? how you to think about looked into this. i grew up in a house where

albums run most always playing. -- ore: all the great almost always playing. charlie: all the great albums. pacific, soundth of music, king and i. it was latin music at the party because we are puerto rican. then when we would clean up the usafr the party, we would put o t casalbum. charlie: or you shy or are you -- or like you are now? lin-manuel: i still think i'm shy. i do. likel in love with -- i applause. i wasn't the kind of person who would take over a run to take over it but if i had something i was good at, i was eager to share it. my mother's favorite story is our first p&l were seidel -- pn

pianorecital. -- p an recital. i knew one. and they first song clapped and i looked up and looked around and said this is going to be the reaction. and i played four songs. charlie: that reminds me tend saida once told me -- i why baseball? he said was pretty good and i got ap and i wanted to he me plause so i got better. lin-manuel: i don't thk m a novelist.e sitting alone and not getting the payoff. i'm fine with sitting alone. " was a sixmilton

yes of sittingale but the soone aney have ideas onit for w make it better an somne kno how to stage it. the ith show and tell. the gratificatn of the other verses film and television. audience let yo in the moment how they are feeling about what you are doing. charli and it changes night tonight. fnt rowel we have a people who literally want a lottery to be ther they give uevything. ey a there and th didn't even know they would be there at nig for the experiencing it first time and i eeriencit for the timefit ecause they e. charlie: you make your way down to manhattan. to hunter college. lin-manuel: hunter college high school. charlie:?

lin-manuel: you have to ask my parents. i took the test when i was five. i won the lottery when i was five when i passed the mysterious tests that get you into hunter college elementary school because i got a great free public school education. i was learning about matisse and jackson pollock in kindergarten. i remembermang drip paintings when i was six years old and getting my early appreciation for art even then. and a school that really valued the arts and put them on the same level as a mac and social studies and history. the commendation of my school was to do the six grade play. we did 28 versions of the six musicals. i played conrad birdie.

my nanny made my gold leather jackets and every girl had to pretend to fall in love with me and faye and when i snap. that is what happened -- and faint when i snapped. i was 12 years old, three feet tall. was the sex symbol of the grade. charlie: you knew early on you want to be an artist. lin-manuel: i didn't know whether it would be movies, theater, animation. i was always gravitated towards that. charlie: but you are doing this without any formal musical training. lin-manuel: st high school musiclass and anna lessons. piano lessons. i learned my major and minor chords.

i remember calling i friend alex and saying i'm playing in f -- an a and a c, what is that? i didn't know the names but i knew i needed them for the songs. charlie: did you have a good ear? lin-manuel: a good ear. are ae: they say you fantastic mimic. you could do that. you could hear something and repeated. a song. in p&luel: the reading piano lessons was slow. i got bored. .t was a faster system what music did you listen to beyond showtunes, beyond famous musicians? lin-manuel: i was into hip-hop.

1980's -- i was born in other wasn't ever a time where hip-hop wasn't part of my life. charlie: was it your music from the time you heard it? lin-manuel: it was mine and my sisters. theister was bringing home fat boys and she took me to see "beat charlie: it resonated with you. lin-manuel: it was just our music. that gave me permission to start writing. it was an album called "bizarre ride to the far side." i was a 14. delete single -- the lead single was about these guys who couldn't get girls and so much hip-hop is about bluster and how much of jewelry i have and how great a rapper i am and this was about people writing love notes in the note coming back return

to sender. and i was like i could get into that. [laughter] ♪ it was so angst he and great. i memorized that album quickly. i absorbed it bought by it. -- absorbed by it. charlie: the interesting thing about "hamilton" was the mixed tapes. lin-manuel: i think of a mixed

tapes as comic love letters. i think a lot of my creative energy in high school was spent literally making mix tapes to girls i liked, for friends of mine who i wanted them to get to know who i was. it was easier for me to say this 90 minutes on this cassette tape. you have to listen to a consecutively. and i put it in into a funny interlude. it was that and cleanup. build scores the way we build mix tape for girls. sit for a afford to little while. the book and started

thinking about it, i thought of it the way i started think of making mix tapes for my friends. it is i will take you on the ride. charlie: in the first step is to draw you in. lin-manuel: the first song is everything. if you fast-forward through the first song, you messed up. [laughter] remember, you are listening to a consecutively. -- two it consecutively. i set it as a challenge to encapsulate hamilton's entire life into one song. think in forced me to a hamiltonian way. i was telling you before the heng about hamilton is spoken paragraphs. dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot in the caribbean

by providence, in -- impoverished in squalor. corrupt to be a hero and a scholar. very hamiltonian. charlie: you put in that some 20 years of living. when you begin to think about things and at the same time occasionally going once a year parents to theur theater, what were you thinking? what was that like? it wasuel: life-changing. one, the first show i remember seeing is a remember a few things from the night. i remember falling asleep for a little while because i was seven. i remember the suicide, the

master of the house and laughing really hard. wasthing i remember most seeing -- my parents brought album andwo disc cast my mother would play "bring him burst intoloop and tears and it really moved me the effect music had on her. ♪ lin-manuel: seeing how this story and this man wanting this kid to live moved my mother to tears. much ofthat is as reason i'm in musical theater as anything else. charlie: because of the emotional connection with your mother? lin-manuel: because of the power musical theater has in terms of

emotional connection. physical theater is not one art form. together.rt forms the lighting, the costumes have to be right. but wanted all conspire's to create those moments, there is nothing like it. charlie: and to say there is nothing like it means it has -- delivers more of an emotional punch than any other kind of visual or musical influence. lin-manuel: because it's happening to you live. there is no distance of the screen. you see it yet you can't believe you are seeing it. i'm thinking of the final moment story,"ca in "west side the bottle dance on "fiddler on the roof." there are these moments when you stand outside yourself like alum i really a person watching this?

-- how am i really a person watching this? charlie: and then you go see "rent." lin-manuel: rented it did for me what the far side did for me. it said, you can write this. you are not -- we are not so different u.n. i. i.you and it is about people living, dallying, struggling as an artist. it was the career i saw myself going into. struggling as an artist. charlie: and living and dying. in the present. it took place now and in a neighborhood just down town my sister grew up. my parents went to nyu together. that was before i was born. -- it gave me permission it you are allowed to write about what you know. i did not know that.

not in my bones. ♪

charlie: you said it was a starter pistol for your career. lin-manuel: absolutely. charlie: you heard the starter go off. and for you, it propelled you forward. lin-manuel: larson, who sadly

died before his show even opened did so many of the things i wanted to do. he made a contemporary sound relevant. he ended the conversation as to whether rod had a place in musical theater. we would still have these conversations. it's just a part of language. it was huge. charlie: do you think it gave you any sense of mortality knowing jonathan's story? lin-manuel: i think jonathan's passing before his show opened scared the hell lot of me. you could go at any time.

those ideas you have in your head will stay locked in your head. they go with you unless you get them out into the world. then nothing is promised. tomorrow is not promised. i made plans to come talk to you today but my car could have gone over the highway on the way here. we never know what the next day will bring and yet we plan months and years, which is the most inglorious hope. it is both terrifying -- embarking on a show like this, endeavorng of creative is terrifying because he might not make it to the finish line. charlie: and the finish line is not tomorrow. lin-manuel: the finish line the thing that was in your head into the world. it wasn't about having a career, it was get this thing out of my

head so it can exist. charlie: what was the thing to get out? it was cam we had a latino musical where we are not from the 1950's? storymusical -- west side . but it's such a peculiar subset and tiny slice of latino experience for only gangsta be theater.ed in musical that is what we had. i wanted a licensed business and i wanted to see if we could write a musical about latinos that didn't have any drug deals or crime. because he will see that on the news. that's what they cover, crimes. i was interested in the hard-working people i grew up with then the guy on the corner. the guy on the corner is there inside theso a guy

store on the corner. i wanted to tell his story. charlie: what did you have to get out with "hamilton?" lin-manuel: i had to get out this guys life. it wasn't until i really want in and started researching that i theme i was with in the heights. here's an immigrant, an outsider who writes his way in, right his way to prominence, charms his wife through letters, rights his way into his personal and professional life but then he doesn't know when to shut up and he also self-destructs in his writing. i had a really good idea at the top of the book. he writes this poem. he writes up home about the carnage of a hurricane. it is used for leaf efforts into scholarship is raised to send him to the mainland.

i said that's the most hip-hop thing i ever heard. it's a story of creating something beautiful out of the ashes of something else. the south bronx was a mess in the 1970's. it was burnt down buildings, empty parking lots, graffiti. it was block parties happening. it was something beautiful being ofated out of the ashes something old. that is what hamilton did and he wrote about his struggles and got out on the strength of his writing and that is the trajectory of so many hip-hop artists i respect. charlie: the ability to express yourself in words. lin-manuel: the ability to be a reporter on the frontlines of where you grew up in your struggle and that is what hamilton did. he said my island is ruined. abouts what jay-z writes

when he writes about the projects. it is writing your way out and that hope that if you can write and you are smart, you can get out. i had that good idea in the second chapter and the idea of him as a hip-hop artist, it just kept -- as i read the book, it kept proving me right. just kept proving me right in a million different ways. under a pseudonym like so many rappers do, took up a moniker to write against a wireless. then he becomes washington's aid to camp. he is responsible for washington's correspondence during the revolutionary war. he has the front seat. he wanted to fight. that is the other fun thing. he has the plum job and he's like give me a command.

charlie: because heroes come from the battlefield. lin-manuel: and social mobility comes from the battlefield. i don't have connections. mother's gone, dad is lord knows where, and i have got to make my bones as a glorious fighter or i can die as a martyr, which would also be fine. charlie: a certification of "i belong." lin-manuel: i belong, i fought for this country. charlie: "i'm an american." lin-manuel: and the fact that it's an immigrant outsider who created the notion of one america more than anyone else through his financial system. we were also eking of -- speaking of ourselves as commoner. people would say to jefferson, will you vote for hamiltons plan or are you new york countries man question by the country, he

-- they meant virginia. this is what began this thinking of ourselves as one nation. that's like the greatest day of your life when you discovered alexander hamilton. because of what you were able to do with it. a way into theaw story. i immediately went to google and said someone has done this. it's too good a story for there not to be three musicals about hamilton that i don't know about. so i got to work because i wanted to get there first. charlie: the immigrant thing. is there a connection with your father because he made the decision to come here from puerto rico? lin-manuel: i father is technically not an immigrant because puerto rico is part of the united states. charlie: he is from and i went. lin-manuel: from the caribbean and not speaking -- from an island. lin-manuel: from the caribbean

and not speaking a word of english. he graduated college by 18 and puerto rico. of the family.s i'm the slacker. charlie: do you in any way have an immigrant's connection beyond your father. is there this idea of being an immigrant inside of your own psyche? lin-manuel: i grew up in an immigrant neighborhood. a historically immigrant neighborhood. it was irish and then became a minute can and latino immigrants. i think i come at it from a ifferent angle, which was -- lottery. i learned to pronounce my name differently in english and spanish.

i was speaking spanish at homecoming bush high school. i was a little of myself in both places and it wasn't until i grew up i started bringing all of myself to the room. it's a great way to make a writer. a part of you was always observing because you are trying to figure out where you fit in. charlie: you had are ready written in the heights when this occurred. lin-manuel: yes. people were asking what is your next thing going to be. charlie: that was part of it. you had done something and wasn't sure about in the next step. lin-manuel: i don't think it was a cool incident it was my first vacation. it was the first time i had any time off. charlie: having done what you had done and you were on the beach not knowing where you might go, you bought to this big 800 page book.

and hamilton speaks to you instantly. what do you do when you come back from your vacation? lin-manuel: star writing. i go back to eight shows a week but i started writing. i finish the book on vacation and i was like, this will be a beast. charlie: but you knew. lin-manuel: i was making lists of what the songs were. charlie: not a moment of doubt this is something. lin-manuel: it was just can i do it? charlie: this is my opportunity, my story, i was born to tell alexander hamilton's story. can you imagine anybody else better qualified to tell this story venue? lin-manuel: not in retrospect but at the time, i just felt i had a huge thing by the tail. i said it's going to take

everything i've got to wrestle this thing to the ground. john wightman is up here and a history.o has wrestled as well as anyone could have ever done. i sent him e-mails and said the more research i do, i started getting bogged down. you can't stay attached to the drama of the through-line. that would lead to differing accounts and jefferson said this. he said just keep your head down and write. show.g it all into one charlie: all of the songs were there. could feel the

song moments but really being able to get it into a form that was to adjustable in one evening , that's the hard part. it's a lot of stories concurrently and the story of our nation and also george washington's story. we see his rise from general to president. it's aaron burr's story who we know nothing about. even ron doesn't write about that much in the book. judith tells it you story. that's how you know you have to have erin tell the story. the man who killed him tells the story. lin-manuel: is a dramatic way to

tell the story.

charlie: that is the idea. he wrote a letter. goodanuel: saying i'm a christian, i will not do it. the first challenge being i have to face him but i will not kill him. charlie: did he think he was going to die? qutions historians have beening

asking. i h provide the dramatic answer to that and it was the lasthing wrote in the show. charlie: because you had not come to any conclusion about it or because somehow, it's almost as if you have been doing lincoln story and you can only face up to what happens in the theater when you are really prepared to do it? lin-manuel: something happened to me. by the time i reached hamilton's moment in the duel and the bullets coming at him, a couple things happened. one, i don't care about why. what i care about is what are the last things going through his head? i found that much more interesting. while he is wrestling with whether to shoot at this man who's shooting at him, he's also thinking about having got here, how he got to this moment, the people waiting for him on the other side. things waiting for him on

this aside if he lives. justot judging any of it, the moments. charlie: do you believe alexander hamilton for all he was and all he became was ready to die? lin-manuel: in the words of notorious b.i.g., "ready to die." i think yes. i think hamilton was ready to die from the time he was 14 years old. i think what he has is what i have is that thing that tomorrow is not promised and i have to get as much done as i can. i think he had this curious fascination with and obsession with death because he saw it at such a young age. his mother died in bed next to him. they both got sick, she never got better. what does that do to you? charlie: what does it do to you? lin-manuel: it makes me think my main character, he sees death

everywhere. what he you just said has in him, i have been me. "do it." we still have to plan. might've had an appointment on the books that day. he was going to have lunch that day. that's how we all live. life,e: to live a great you must be prepared to fail, share, and to die maybe. lin-manuel: that's why did things scary is to us are those seeds we plant that might outlive us, having children, gettinmarried. you are putting tngs into the world the might not live out to sea and its so scary but so hopeful.

so you are full of all of this. doinge thinking by anything musical because of who you were and what you live with, your music is hip-hop. your music is rap. lin-manuel: and i also believe that form is uniquely suited to hamilton story because it has more words per measure than any other musical song. charlie: it has shakespearean words. lin-manuel: yes, it has rhythm and density and if hamilton had anything in his writing,t's a density. that is what is true of my favorite hip-hop artists. it's function follows form. perfect form to

tell this story. this musical genre is the best story to tell his and that of the revolution. every couplet needed to be the best i ever wrote. that is how seriously i was taking it. it starts with the friends and they are doing 80's rap. it's a great rap. warren and the place to be." super like it -- then here comes hamilton and its rhyming six lines on a line. ,t's insane polysyllabic internal assonance. to be like from the

future, a world-beating intellect. waiting,ssionately passionately, passionately. it's the lack of creation. i'm laughing in the face of casualty. i'm not thinking passed tomorrow. ♪ >> timeo take a shot, time to take a shot not throwing away my shot ♪ charlie: camels and demands a lot from you. he is calling on your best. lin-manuel: because he is the smartest guy in the room.

i have to write from the perspective of the smallest guy in the room when the other people are jefferson and washington. charlie: what about the 10 crack commandments? lin-manuel: 10 crack commanents is a how-to manual on how to deal drugs. when i was faced with the challee of hamilton of how do that duels were not this impulsive thing? there was a code. but there was a code. it's just like a drugs in our country. it didn't matter what class or rank you were in, you could go do a duel. charlie: oth people didn't know what was happening. lin-manuel: but there were rules. he wrote a challenge letter, you acknowledge. there's a great book called the fares of honor that explained the rules.

i need to explain this to the audience so they don't think this was some gunfight him positively. there were weeks reading up to this and i had to explain that. using the structure, there's a step-by-step booof how to stay alive and support your family and not get killed. charlie: that's in your head. lin-manuel: that is what big did with the song and that's what i did with the dueling code. charlie: and then there's the story of going to the white house. you have one song. they said wouldn't it be great if you come here and do something you've already done? i don't think you have one song -- or why were you so hell-bent on this one song for a performance at the white house? we areuel: they said

happy for you to do anything from "in the heights." if you have anything else from the american experience -- charlie: they said if you have anything else from the american experience. lin-manuel: i said i have a hot 16 bars. [laughter] if not at the white house, when? do you know what i mean? if the white house calls come you have 16 about alexander hamilton in your back pocket. the call felt like a fine -- "i have to do this there." do theen i was asked to lincoln center concert. the data they gave me was hamilton's birthday and i was like -- ♪ the scotsman dropped in the middle of the forgot

girl up to be a hero and a scholar the $10 founding father without a father got a lot father by working a lot hotter, by being a lot smarter, by being a self-starter. they placed him in charge of a train in charter, carted away across the waves. he was longing for something to be a part of then a hurricane came, devastation reigned and our man site's future drip down the drain he wrote his first refrain the word got around and they said this kid is insane forgetr education, don't from whence you came and the world is going to know your name

what is your name, man? alexander hamilton, his name is alexander hamilton ♪ [laughter] ♪ there are a million things he hasn't done but just you wait, just you wait ♪ till years later, alex and his mother bed ridden alex got better but his mother went quick moved in with a cousin, the cousin committed suicide, left him with nothing but a real and pride, something new inside alex, you got to fend for yourself he started retreating and reading everything on the shelf he would have been dead or destitute without a sense of restitution, started working for his late mother's landlord every book he can get his hands on, planning for the future see him now as he stands on the

bow of a ship headed for a new land in new york, you can be a new man now,hip is in the harbor see if you can spot him another immigrant coming up from the bottom -- i'm the full that shot him charlie: when you did it and you look at the video now on youtube -- terrified: i see a young puerto rican man. terrified. and you can see it too. once the song starts, i'm good. but my interview -- intro, i'm stammering. i don't do that in ordinary speech. i'm terrified because there is a leader of the free world, his biden, sauly, williams, one of my favorite poets. martinez. angie

james earl jones. he rose and luminaries. charlie: all the more perfect place for this song. lin-manuel: and i'm closing the night. i'm the last act. charlie: and when you finished? lin-manuel: i was 50 pounds lighter. charlie: did you know you had done the right thing and you had nailed it? lin-manuel: that video is a microcosm of my entire hamilton experience. i say hip-hop, alexander hamilton, everyone laughs. by the end, they aren't laughing because they are in it. they have been sucked into the story. the secret sauce of this show besides the unbelievable work done by my collaborators and incredible casting crew, the secret sauce in the writing is

that i can't believe this story true. if such an improbable and amazing story and i learned about it while i was writing it and i inc. -- i think that enthusiasm is baked into the recipe. charlie: that was a great moment for you and hamilton. this is thestood way to express alexander hamilton. lin-manuel: it was the thesis. charlie: and it's well constructed. lin-manuel: and i had a bit of luck. hbo film that evening. normally, it's c-span cameras. the way it was shot, it wasn't released on youtube until november of that year. it happened in may. and this unbelievable hd footage. i still don't believe it's me when i watch that. and teachers started using it in their classrooms. look at the youtube comments.

"my teacher showed me this in ap history." song still your favorite song and everything you've ever written? lin-manuel: no. i love that song and i'm super product that but there are a " that songs in "hamilton really pushed me to the limits of what i know about writing songs. songf them is angelica's where we have seen the courtship of hamilton's life and we rewind the whole thing and see the perspective of her sister. we hear from her how electric it is and we see the woman is the smartest person in the room. she reads and walton the moment she walks in the room. she knows he's perfect for her sister.

charlie: but she loves him. lin-manuel: but she loves him. it's an unrequited love song. the book begins and ends with eliza's story. so does our show, really. our show ends with eliza's story. charlie: she lives on. lin-manuel: more than twice his age. she meets lincoln. that is extraordinary. that is an extraordinary life. if we are not promised tomorrow, she got so many tomorrows and did so much with it. and that is very moving to me. , i have when you write tearsold you write and come to your eyes. you are in the moment. to express yourself.

lin-manuel: i think of acting and writing as pretty much the same thing. they are two sides of the same coin. charlie: writing and acting are the same thing. lin-manuel: yes. he has to pretend to be the person just to understand what it is like in their skin. charlie: but he never acted. it's all about getting inside the skin of your characters and seeing where they are and knowing how they've grown up. you have to know what they have come up against, who they are, and then you just start talking and you write until the rest comes out of the faucet and its clear water. charlie: the clearwater is the perfection. lin-manuel: it's the stuff that feels true. it feels true and honest. people tot's hard for

understand how difficult that creative act is. the rest out until you see the clearwater and the artist knows what the clear water looks like. lin-manuel: the secret is the thing we all have, which is the hardest thing for us to do less people, which is empathy. it's all about empathy. i have got to understand, see the guy and get in his head. andve to get into his heart blood stream and understand what he was thinking and what he's scared of and what he is excited by. charlie: you are hamilton. rin-manuel: but i was bur too. charlie: are they equally satisfying? lin-manuel: absolutely. they are both so much fun.

you get to express so many different parts of yourself. i get to be marie reynolds, i get to seduce a guy. these lines,ing there is a double entendre. there's all kinds of stuff going in it. is that a process of editing over that year? you write one song to get everything right and you are also getting this. because some say they go back and back and back to see "hamilton" because you get something different every time. that's a function of the hip-hop origin of the idea. to thattill go listen song i fell in love with an eighth grade and hear something new in it or simply require didn't get because i was too young to understand.

as you canhip-hop packet to the gills with meaning, with verbal tricks and cleverness but also a motion. the notion of the triple entendre is something i learned about through hip-hop. i find that so exciting. i wanted it to be a satisfying listening experience and that has carried over. charlie: when did you know that this thing was going to have impact, thisge thing being hamilton. theater, "hamilton ." "hamilton" people are calling a game changer. lin-manuel: when did i know. soldw when we -- we

tickets very quickly. i knew that would happen because i've been very active on twitter and people had been waiting since the video. charlie: there was anticipation. lin-manuel: i knew we would sell out the initial run but we announced the extension. he said you broke our phone bank. our phones are down. and our internet is down. charlie: nobody has seen a preview, anything. except the video on youtube. lin-manuel: that's when i knew. i began to get an inkling of what was happening. this is as big as it gets off-broadway. charlie: and innovative theater.

we grabbed the tiger by the tail here. and what will history say about hamilton and the evolution of hip-hop? lin-manuel: i don't know. heartening really that the hip-hop community embraced the show. that means the world to me because it is love letter to hip-hop in so many ways. letter and thesis statement about what hip-hop does in our lives. it enables us, gives us stories of struggle and triumph, allows us to be bigger than ourselves the same way musical theater does. thrilling to me -- writers and rappers i respect have been coming to see this show because it's a love letter to their art form a slightly different artform. i don't know what it will do to hip-hop. i'm thrilled hip-hop likes it.

it's my mix tape to them. ♪

john: good evening from palm beach the well-known florida home of donald j trump. after the show, mark and i will sit down with mr. trump to talk about policy. we will show you that interview tomorrow. but first, here is what happened in brussels. bomb attacks have killed 30 and injured more than 200. isis has claimed responsibility.