Hi, I'm Stage in Stages, Lynn Manuel Miranda, and you're listening to The Hamelcast.

Boots and cuts and boots and cuts.

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Hamelcast. I'm Jillian, and I'm right in the middle of a great

conversation with the Philip Tours Nicole D'Rue. Nicole played Woman 3, aka The Bullet, for over

five years, and just recently became a swing, which she's absolutely loving. Nicole has always had a

balance between being academic and being creative. She went to Drexel University on a dance

scholarship and graduated with a degree in marketing and retail merchandising. Hamilton was her first official gig right out of college, and after five years of the

bullet, performing over 1,500 shows and over 50 cities, Nicole started to look towards the future.

She saw a chance to make a change and take on more responsibility. So, with her post-Hamilton life

in mind, Nicole turned her world upside down and became a swing.

She talks all about that in last week's episode, which I hope you've already listened to because we're about to dive back into our chat.

Oh, and just a quick note, this was recorded in September of 2024.

All right, here we go.

Here's my second episode with the lovely Nicole Dereau. In 2020 during lockdown and during this, you know, the word reckoning is what everyone was using at the time, but you used your voice to really speak up against systemic racism, calling for change, not just in the entertainment industry, but in the world. Really using your platform

for Black Lives Matter, encouraging people to vote, promoting wearing a mask, you were working

with Ham for Progress. Totally. I'd love to talk to you about that and like what you think the landscape is now

compared to 2020, like what's changed, what else needs to be done. So I'd love to dive into that

if you'd be willing to. Yeah, totally. I mean, I loved getting involved with Ham for Progress

over the pandemic. We really were just trying to push out what we could because

we knew that Hamilton had a platform and we were the ones that really like pulled them out and

we're like, we need to use what we've got here to like do the right thing express what we really need to to share not just perform and do this show but to also make things better i mean

they they started it with edge of ham like they they are so they were so focused on that pre-pandemic like

...