Jonathan Groff

Apologies if this has been asked before, I know things at least related to it have been asked before on this subreddit.

So as has been noticed by others, there's a tendency in the various Hamilton casts to cast actors who physically resemble those in the original cast. Not all, there are a fair number of exceptions, but it's clearly a deliberate pattern. I don't necessarily have any problem with that, as I think that's a relatively normal thing for musicals to do, because it evokes the spirit of the production that people would likely be most familiar with.

The thing that stands out to me is that, in all of this, there is only one pattern to which there is absolutely no exception: in all the different casts (I could find 6 casts total on the website), King George is *always* played by a white actor, and every other character is *always* played by a nonwhite actor. That is too strong of a pattern to say that it's just a coincidence or just part of the trend of casting people who look like the original actors. Because there's wiggle-room on everything else: for example, most of the actors playing Washington are black and most look like Christopher Jackson, but not all. Many of the actors playing Hamilton are Hispanic and look like Lin-Manuel Miranda, but not all. And most of the actors playing the King look somewhat like Jonathan Groff, but not all. The only thing that is absolutely consistent is that all the actors in all 6 casts, every single one, is nonwhite, except for the King, who is white in every production, every single one. The King being white and everyone else being nonwhite is the only hard rule with no exceptions here.

Even if it were the case that all the King George actors were white, but there was a white actor or two sprinkled in a few other roles here and there, I could believe that maybe it's just a coincidence that the King is the only character whose race doesn't change between productions. But it's the fact that all *54* of the actors that play characters other than the King in all the productions I could find were nonwhite, without fail, seems to seal the deal that this really is a hard rule, no exceptions, while everything else is at most a preference. The producers of the musical clearly made an explicit decision: "We'd prefer Washington to be black, but he doesn't have to be necessarily, so long as he's not white. We'd prefer Hamilton to be Hispanic, but he doesn't have to be, just so long as he's not white. We'd prefer Eliza to be black too, but it's not a hard rule, just so long as she isn't white. The King though– he has to be white."

Why is this? I don't want to assume that there's malice in it, that it was out of some desire to just portray white as bad and nonwhite as good, but I seriously can't come up with any other explanation for it.