Marcus John Went From Being Nicknamed 'Broadway' to Starring in Hamilton on Broadway

Long before Marcus John stepped into the title role in Hamilton at Broadway’s Richard Rodgers Theatre, people were already calling him “Broadway.” The moniker took hold when John was a teenager in Maryland, years before Hamilton even existed. Now, after touring the country and the world with the musical, he has finally landed in New York City. John sat down with Broadway.com Editor-in-Chief Paul Wontorek to talk about how he arrived at the destination long-predicted by his community.

John grew up on Maryland’s Eastern Shore before moving to Prince George’s County around middle school. Despite his new life in Manhattan, he admits to feeling most comfortable “deep in the country.” That makes New York's concrete jungle an adjustment. “I'm always at the park. I'm always trying to find grass, nature, watching birds,” he says.

The performer in John emerged almost by accident. He joined an after-school production of The Wiz due to his love of Michael Jackson. “I just went to the interest meeting and auditioned and I ended up in the ensemble,” he says. Soon, he was getting the full ensemble experience, from the tornado and the crows to Emerald City and “A Brand New Day.”

Sports remained equally important. Rather than choosing between athlete and performer, John found that one strengthened the other. “I didn't stop playing sports,” he says. “I just used my athleticism to make me a better dancer. Especially because I didn't have the training, but I have balance and strength that others might not have had by the time I started training in college.”

By his junior year of high school, when he appeared in Dreamgirls, his community had begun calling him "Broadway." “It was always less a nickname and more manifestation,” John says. “We literally knew that each of us would be doing exactly what we're doing right now.”

Hamilton eventually gave that manifestation a more specific shape. John first learned of the musical while on tour with Mamma Mia! in 2015. “I was like, ‘Oh, that's obviously the one that I want to be doing,’” he says. “I hadn't done a show since Dreamgirls that made me feel like everything I am and everything I've done, who I've been in my career as an artist, is now present in this piece that someone else wrote."

It took 15 auditions to get there. “Any time a new cast was popping up, I was either sending in a video, or once I got further into my training, flying in,” John says. Eventually, he stopped trying to decipher what the creative team might want. “I had to get out of that funk, remember who [I am] and just do what I do.” His hard work and self-confidence paid off, joining the North American tour of Hamilton in 2018 as a swing. While he originally covered the roles of Marquis de Lafayette/Thomas Jefferson, Hercules Mulligan/James Madison and John Laurens/Philip Hamilton, the title role was eventually added to his roster.

He made his debut as Hamilton at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. "All of PG County came through,” he recalls. “It was beautiful. My family from the Eastern Shore came up. A lot of people from my high school came, and it felt like a huge celebration of all the things we had always said."

While John "would do Hamilton anywhere," now that he's leading the Broadway cast, he's often asked what it's like to achieve his dream. "My Broadway dreams came true at the Kennedy Center; my community got to celebrate. My Broadway dreams came true in the Philippines, when they embraced us like we were Beyonce," he reflects. "This show has taken me places that I never imagined, and it's allowed me to share things with other people who really, really love the thing—even more than I do." 

John sees the opportunity less as validation than responsibility. “Getting to do it on Broadway, that's the duty,” he says. “Now it's my turn to do it in representation for that community and for those people who don't get to do this.”

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