let your freak flag fly. don't miss the grooviest trip at sea. ♪ >> from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. charlie: how is it to be back at this house? >> it is normal. i only live a few blocks away. it's -- i have been here since i was one year old. charlie: this is a house of memories. >> a house of memories, a house of goes. -- ghost. it is also a laboratory for me. i filmed so many action movies where we are sitting.

i filmed so many animated movies with my g.i. joe's. my dad had those big over the shoulder camcorders. he brought one home. we never shot family videos, it was just me, making movies. charlie: you think you would be a director? >> i wanted to be stephen silver -- spielberg. he does not get you far in school. i kind of figured to that -- that is to i was socially, doing the school play. i played a lot of people. charlie weis that just happen -- charlie: did that just happen? how is it that one kid wants to do those things? what is it in you that made you want to do those things? those of the things that you do -- are the things that you do. >> is an incredible to do what we love? you have to think about how you looked into this -- lucked into

this. charlie: all of the great albums of all of the great musical theater. >> my fair lady, sound of music, south pacific. that was the music that we played to clean up after parties. we would dance because we are rican. can -- puerto charlie: were you shy or like you are now? >> i still think i am shy. i honestly do. , i like theve with flaws -- applause. i would not take over a room just to take over it, but i was eager to share. my mother's favorite story, i am sure she will tell you -- our first piano recital.

i only practiced enough to play one song. i learned four, but only one i could do reliably. i would go up the scale and go back down. they clapped. i looked up, i looked around, and i said, if this is the reaction. i started playing more. a teacher lifted me off at the piano bench and took me also the other kids could play. told me, id williams said, why baseball? he said, i heard applause, so i got better. it was an incentive. i don't think i am cut out to be a novelist. sitting alone, also not getting the payoff. writinge sitting alone, hamilton took years.

but the payoff is i get to go into a room with tom kale and play for him. alex has three more ideas, and then andy will know how to stage it. .here is a show and tell the gratification of the universe is filled and television is -- film and television is the audience lets you know in the moment how they are feeling. you do not wait a year. charlie: it changes night tonight. we have people in the audience who pay $10. they did not know they would be there that night. they are experiencing it for the first time. i experience it for the first time because they are. charlie: going up here, you make your way to manhattan. but down from here. to hunter college. lin-manuel: yes.

charlie: why? lin-manuel: you have to ask my parents. when i wasottery five years old when i passed the battery of mysterious tests they give you to hunter college elementary. i got a free, great public education. isse, learning about mat and jackson pollock and canada and -- in kindergarten. i had my early appreciation for art then. a school that valued the art --arts. the combination of the elementary school was to do the sixth grade play. we did 20 minute versions of six musicals. i seemed to be the only one who got stuck with it, and cannot let go. -- could not let it go.

i played conrad birdie. grade had to the pretend to fall in love with me and saint -- faint. i said, why would anybody do anything else for a living? this is the best. i was 12 years old. i was shorter than all of the girls. but when i played conrad birdie, i was the sex symbol. charlie: you knew early on you wanted to be an artist? lin-manuel: i didn't know if it would be animation or theater, i was always gravitating towards that. charlie: you are doing this without any formal musical training. lin-manuel: that's right. just p&l lessons -- just high school piano lessons. -- chned my major courts

ords. i'm ever calling my friend and sharp, i am playing in a c, i didn'tp, a know the names. charlie: did you have a good ear? lin-manuel: yes. charlie: they say you are a fantastic minute. you can hear something and repeated? -- repeat it? lin-manuel: i got frustrated with piano lessons because it was slow to read. but i could hear it on the radio and plant. -- play it. charlie: that serve you for the rest of your life. what music did you listen to be on show tends -- beyond showtunes. lin-manuel: i was born in 1980.

there was never a time when hip-hop was not a part of my life. charlie: was it your music? lin-manuel: it was my sister and i -- our music. my sister took me to take -- to see beats street. charlie: it resonated with you? lin-manuel: it was just our music. the album that gave me permission to start writing or think about writing it was an album called bizarre ride to the far side. this came out in 1994, i was 14. the lead single was about guys who cannot get girls. by."s called, "passing me so much hip-hop is about lester -- bluster. and was about love notes

the note coming back return to sender. i had a crush on a teacher. i had a crush on a girl that liked another guy. the great hook sampled by millions -- ♪ you do not know me but i know you very well i made an attempt i said i wish i was not a wimp i would do it in the bed with you ♪ angsty andngst he -- great. i started absorbing everything. i absorbed hip-hop by making mixed tapes. i would say, i have this, what do you have? i got into all of these different john is. -- genres. charlie: that is interesting because hamilton was first a mixed tape. lin-manuel: i think a lot of my

creative energy in high school was spent, literally making mixed tapes were friends of mine, girls i liked. it was easier for me to say, this 90 minutes on this tape defines who i am. the difference between a mixed tape or data cd is that you have to listen to it consecutively. i take you on a ride. energystart with a high song, and then i will interlude with an adam sandler song. the fourth one tells you who i really am. really, i think i could build scores the way i used to make mixed tapes. now i can wake you up, now we can sit and balance.

it the way iof thought of making mixed tapes. i am going to take you on a ride. the ride will tell the story of this man. charlie: the first step is to draw you in. songanuel: yes, the first on a mix tape is everything -- mixed tape is everything. you are listening to it consecutively. that is what it shares with musical theater. as a challenge to myself, i wanted to encapsulate hamilton's entire life and toby moment he was in new york with one song. it forced me to think in a hamilton way. the thing about hamilton is he spoke in paragraph. the opening sentence of the show is a crazy run-on sentence. how does a bastardized orphan son of a horror and a sox -- whore and scotsman,

grow up to be a hero and a scholar. that is the question we will answer. it is a very hamiltonian sentence. charlie: they said you put in that song, 20 years of living for him. when you begin to think about things, and occasionally go once a year, or more. parents -- more with your parents, what were you thinking? lin-manuel: it was life-changing. the first show i are members seeing was les miserables. -- i remember seeing was les miserables. i remember crying when feinstein died. i'm ever falling asleep because i was seven. i remember a suicide. i remember master of the house.

i remember laughing really hard. much-needed laughter. was --ng i remember most my parents brought home the two disc cast album. they would play bring him home onleave and burst into -- loop and burst into tears. it moved me. ♪ seeing how this story and this man wanting this kid to live moved to mime -- moved my mother to tears. i think it is that is much of a reason as anything else that i am in theater. the power that musical theater had.

nothing else has in terms of emotional connection. physical theater is not one artform. it is 14 artform's together. the lighting, costumes, set has to be right. when it comes by or those moments, there's nothing like it. charlie: to say there is nothing on her like it means -- on earth like it means it delivers more of an emotional punch than any other kind of visual or musical influence. lin-manuel: i think so because it is happening to you live. there is no distance of screen. you are seeing it but you cannot believe you're seeing a. -- it. i am thinking of the final moments of america from west side story. you think it cannot possibly go any further, and it does. there are these moments when you stand outside of yourself and you say, how am i really a person watching this?

when you are creating it, you're looking to create those moments. charlie: and then you go see nt."ts." -- 're "rent" did for me what the far side did for hip-hop. it is about people living, dying, and struggling as artists. it was headlong the career i saw myself going in. charlie: struggling as an artist. lin-manuel: it took place now. it took place in a neighborhood downtown where my sister grew up. my parents went to nyu together. they were all in the village. that was before i was born. -- you arepermission allowed to write musicals about what you know in the present, it is fair game. i did not know that until i saw

"rent." ♪

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

he, who sadly died before his show opened did so many of the things i wanted to do. contemporary sound relative -- relevant. he ended the conversation as to whether rod had a place in musical theater. it started in hair. it started in jesus christ superstar. we would still have these conversations. charlie: and if you had doubt after rent. we exhorted the way hip-hop -- absorbed it the way hip-hop was absorbed. 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. as a kid it was you could go at , any time.

those ideas -- those big ideas you have in your head will stay locked in your head. they go with you unless you get them out into the world. that is, by the way, still true. 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, on any creative endeavor 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 -- is getting 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. i could get hit by a bus tomorrow. but it exists. charlie: what was the thing to get out? lin-manuel: it was can we had a latino musical where we are not from the 1950's? great musical "west side story." great score. but it's such a peculiar subset and tiny slice of latino experience for only gangsters be represented in musical theater. 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 , but there is also a guy inside

the 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 life.uy's it wasn't until i really want in and started researching that i was in the same 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 created out of the ashes of 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. that is what hamilton did. he said my island is ruined. that is what they did after hurricane katrina.

that is what jay-z writes about 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. it just kept proving me right in a million different ways. he wrote 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. charlie: his ambition wanted to be there. yes 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: america does not exist yet 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 speaking of ourselves as commoner. -- thinking of ourselves as colonies. people would say to jefferson, will you vote for hamilton's plan or are you new york's countryman? by the country, they meant virginia. hamilton's notion of tying us

together economically is what began this thinking of ourselves as one nation. charlie: that's like the greatest day of your life when you discovered alexander hamilton. aside from family. because of what you were able to do with it. lin-manuel: i saw a way into the 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 -- my father is technically not an immigrant because puerto rico is part of the united states. charlie: he is from an island. lin-manuel: from the caribbean and not speaking a word of english. he learned english in school.

he came here to get an education, like hamilton did. he graduated college by 18 in puerto rico. he is the genius of the family. 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. this was all irish when we moved here. it was irish and then became a minute can and latino -- and then it became latino immigrants. i think i come at it from a different angle, which was i won the lottery at five years old. school. go to the right i learned to pronounce my name differently in english and spanish.

i was speaking spanish at home. i was speaking english at school. i was a little of myself in both places, and it was not 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 is always observing because you are trying to figure out where you fit in. charlie: you had already 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 were not sure about the next step. i don't think it was a coincidence it was my first vacation. it was the first time i had any time off. charlie: having done what you had done, and you are 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. finished 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: it is growing rather than there is 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. lin-manuel: i don't know if i was born, but it is a good story. charlie 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.

i went about john wightman is up here and a mentor who has wrestled history. 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. charlie: what seemed impossible? miranda: getting it all into one show. charlie: all of the songs were there. lin-manuel: i could feel the song moments but really being able to get it into a form that

was digestible in one evening, that's the hard part. 12-oh manyake a series about hamilton's life, and it would be just as compelling and entertaining. 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. i had to do a lot of research on burr. this is andrew lloyd webber's inspiration. judith tells it you story. charlie: that's how you know you have to have aaron burr 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. lin-manuel: saying i'm a good christian, i will not do it. the first challenge being i have to face him but i will not kill him. those letters did more damage -- charlie: did he think he was going to die? lin-manuel: now you were asking questions historians have been

asking for 200 years. i had to provide the dramatic answer to that and it was the last thing i wrote in the show. hamilton's side of the duel. 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 side if he lives.

and not judging any of it, just 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. i know i do. charlie: you just said what he has in him, i have been me. "do it." lin-manuel: we still have to plan. he might've had an appointment on the books that day. he was going to have lunch that day. a part of him thought he might die that morning, but he also had plans. that's how we all live. charlie: to live a great life, 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, getting married. you are putting things into the world the might not live out to sea and its so scary but so hopeful.

charlie: so you are full of all of this. you are thinking by doing 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, it's a density. that is what is true of my favorite hip-hop artists. it's function follows form.

and this is the perfect form to tell this story. this musical genre is the best story to tell his and that of the revolution. it took me a year to write "my shot" which is hamilton's big "i want" song. 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. "i'm a john laurens in the place to be." like super like it -- then here comes hamilton and its rhyming six lines on a line. it's insane polysyllabic, internal assonance. he needed to be like from the future, a world-beating intellect.

every couplet had to be unimpeachable. >> i'm passionately waiting, passionately, passionately. every action's an act of creation i'm laughing in the face of casualties and sorrow for the first time i'm not inking past tomorrow i'm not throwing away my shot i'm not throwing away my shot i'm young,y country, scrappy, and hungry we're going to rise up, rise up rise up, rise up >> time to take a shot, take a shot nd i'm not throwing away my -- >> not throwing away my shot ♪ >> hamilton 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. very smart guys. charlie: what about the 10 crack commandments? lin-manuel: 10 crack commandments is a how-to manual on how to deal drugs. when i was faced with the challenge of hamilton of how do i explain that duels were not this impulsive thing? there was a code. they were legal but there was a code. it's just like a drugs in our country. it's the same thing. it didn't matter what class or rank you were in, you could go do a duel. charlie: other 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 affairs of honor that explained

the rules. and i said 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 book of 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?

lin-manuel: they said we are happy for you to do anything from "in the heights." if you have anything else from the american experience -- charlie: that's what they were looking for, the american experience. lin-manuel: i said i have a hot 16 bars. [laughter] it's the only thing i've written. 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." like when i was asked to do the lincoln center concert. the data they gave me was hamilton's birthday and i was like -- have to listen to those. how does a basket, orphan, son of a whore and a scotsman

dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot in the caribbean in squalor grow 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 have placed him in charge of a trading charter carted away across the waves ,hamilton kept his guard of inside he was longing for , something to be a part of then a hurricane came, devastation reigned and our man saw his future drip down the drain put a pencil to his temple, connected it to his brain he wrote his first refrain a testament to his pain the word got around and they said this kid is insane took up a collection just to send him to the mainland get your education, don't forget 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 and there's a million things he hasn't done but just you wait just you wait when he was 10, his father split, full of it, debt ridden 10 years later, see alex and his mother bedridden sitting in their own sick, the senate alex got better but his mother went quick moved in with a cousin, the cousin committed suicide left him with nothing but ruin 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 the ship is in the harbor now, see if you can spot him another immigrant coming up from the bottom his enemies destroyed his rep america forgot them me, i'm the fool that shot him ♪ charlie: when you did it and you look at the video now on youtube -- lin-manuel: i see a terrified young puerto rican man. terrified. and you can see it too. once the song starts, i'm good. but my 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 entire family, biden, saul williams, one of my favorite poets. angie martinez, james earl jones.

if i died i could not have trimmed up this room of heroes and luminaries. and i'm closing. 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 is true.

if such an improbable and amazing story and i learned about it while i was writing it and i think that enthusiasm is baked into the recipe. charlie: that was a great moment for you and hamilton. people understood this is the 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 mean, it looks like i'm in a movie. 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."

charlie: is that song still your favorite song and everything you've ever written? lin-manuel: no. i love that song and i'm super proud of it, but there are a couple songs in "hamilton" that really pushed me to the limits of what i know about writing songs. one of them is "satisfied," which is angelica's song where we have seen the courtship of hamilton and his wife 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. she knows her sister can marry safely because she does not have

to marry for money. her job is to marry for money. for the safety of the family. charlie: but she loves him. lin-manuel: but she loves him. it's an unrequited love song. charlie: women in this musical are important. lin-manuel: toulon's credit, they were important in the book as well. 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. when he is a senator. 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. charlie: when you write, i have been told you write and tears 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. sondheim would tell you the same thing. he has to pretend to be the person just to understand what it is like in their skin. charlie: but he never acted. lin-manuel: 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 as them 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.

and in the moment, you can write it down. charlie: it's hard for people to understand how difficult that creative act is. getting all the rust out until you see the clear water 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. i have to get into his heart and blood stream and understand what he was thinking and what he's scared of and what he is excited by. charlie: you are hamilton. lin-manuel: but i was burr 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. charlie: writing these lines, 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. lin-manuel: that's a function of the hip-hop origin of the idea. i will still go listen to that 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. the fun of hip-hop as you can 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 this huge, huge impact, this thing being hamilton. at the public theater, "hamilton." on broadway, "hamilton" people are calling a game changer. lin-manuel: when did i know.

i knew when we -- we sold tickets very quickly. when we announced our opening. i knew that would happen because i've been very active on twitter and people had been waiting since the video. history teachers, fans of that one song. 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. i'll be dead. it has been really heartening 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. it is my love 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. so it's 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. ♪

♪ what is welcome to this edition of best of "with all due respect." beyond the latest electoral results, each candidate had to respond to the deadly attacks in brussels, and explain how they would protect the u.s. against the islamic state. >> several of them made their case on this program. on tuesday we set our donald trump. the next day we caught up with his chief rival, senator ted cruz of texas as he campaigned in new york city. >> webe