A day in the life: Christopher Jackson, from ‘Bull’ to Broadway’s 'Hamilton’ (USA Today):
Sunday marks his last performance in the musical, which opened off Broadway in February 2015. But on a late-October Friday, USA TODAY followed him on one of his last really busy days. At home in a Westchester County suburb, his son C.J., 11, left his lunch at home, while daughter Jadelyn, 7, forgot her eyeglasses. So dad and mom, singer Veronica Vazquez-Jackson, made separate trips to provide them. Around 9:30, he arrived at Bull’s Brooklyn studio and went into makeup for his scene with guest star Yara Martinez (Jane the Virgin).
11:28 a.m.: Jackson wraps the scene and heads to his dressing room. “Once we’re done with a scene, it’s gone.” Shooting television, “the camera is the only audience that you really have, and five weeks later you see what really came about.”
With Hamilton fame fueling interest, he auditioned for several pilots last spring, and Bull was among the last. Through prior arrangement, his scenes on Hamilton days are scheduled for mornings. "Most often when you’re on a TV show they need to have all of you,“ he says, but "they get how important it is for me to finish out my run. I’ve joked for years I want to land a TV show so I can finance my theater habit.”
Now that Hamilton has taught him how to say goodbye, “We get more Chris Jackson, which we love,” says Weatherly, adding his role will expand. “Sorry for all the Hamilton fans who don’t get to see him as George Washington.”
1:44 p.m.: In jeans, a cap, Air Jordans and a navy coat, he leaves the studio for a few hours of midday rest at home. Sometimes he hits the gym, or he’ll catch up on scripts before heading south to Broadway’s Richard Rodgers Theater.
6:15 p.m.: He arrives at Hamilton for an 8 p.m. performance, one of five he typically does each week (others are performed by Nicholas Christopher, who will take over the role permanently on Nov. 15). Jackson is one of a few remaining original stars of the smash musical; co-stars Daveed Diggs, Leslie Odom Jr., and Lin-Manuel Miranda, left in July. “Chris is one of the hardest-working people I know, and so if anyone can make (double duty) work, that’s him. I’m excited that the show has found its success. That’s my buddy,” says Miranda, who also teamed up with him on Broadways’s In the Heights in 2008 and Moana, the animated Disney film out Nov. 23, for which Jackson sings an opening tune.
6:50 p.m.: “Hamilton is as hard a job as anything I’ve ever done,” Jackson says. “It’s equally rewarding, but it’s very taxing. It’s just so hard physically and emotionally to do it, and it just empties you out.” And by late September, juggling the two jobs left him feeling he was “done,” in part due to his kids: The workload "guaranteed that I wouldn’t have a day off. After about a month, I was like, that’s going to be a problem. I needed to be with my kids and my wife.“
7:05 p.m.: Network TV scripts change each week, 22 times a year. Hamilton’s stays the same. But that doesn’t make it any easier, he says, likening it to a baseball player’s swing. "The inner workings of that swing, the angles, the speed, the tempo is completely different every single time you pick up the bat.”
8:15: The lights go down, and Hamilton goes up. Jackson makes his entrance in Act One’s opening song, “Alexander Hamilton.” The crowd in the 1,300-seat theater roars with approval. Did anyone anticipate such success when rehearsals began two years ago? “Lin didn’t; nobody did,” he says. “If they tell you that, they’re lying.” But neither did they fret over a potential flop: “It didn’t feel like a flyer; it was too smart for that.”
11:28 p.m.: After greeting friends onstage after the performance, Jackson changes back into his jeans and exits the stage door to greet autograph-seeking fans, an enraptured group filled with emotional kids and teenagers. "I would characterize them as enthusiastic,“ he says. The sessions "remind me of a revival experience.”
One earnest young woman on the line sums it up best as Jackson reaches her spot: “Thank you for giving me the feels.”
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