Daveed Diggs rose to ‘fame’ after his critically acclaimed performance on arguably one of the decade’s best broadway musicals – Hamilton. Diggs played the role of Marquis de Lafayette/Thomas Jefferson and ended up winning a Tony in 2016 for “Best Featured Actor in a Musical”.
Now, Diggs is expanding to endeavors beyond broadway as he landed his first movie role as a teacher, Mr. Browne, in the new movie “Wonder”.
We spoke to Diggs and spoke all things “Wonder” and beyond.
Q: In the movie you play a very understanding teacher. Have you ever had a teacher that really made an impact on you?
Diggs: Yeah, I was fortunate enough to have a few of them. So, Robin Davis, my 7th grade homeroom teacher, was a really important teacher to me. Rick Ayers was a teacher of mine in high school, Andy Crawford another high school teacher, I’ve had several teachers and mentors in my life who really taught me things that I still live with to this day and also who sort of helped me and I think attributed a lot to the kind of person I am.
Q: How would a young Daveed react to Auggie?
Diggs: That’s interesting. I think we probably would’ve been friends. I remember in elementary school there were a few kids. I don’t know if I can remember having kids in my class with craniofacial syndromes, but I think there were definitely kids in my school and also kids with other differences.
I think in the communities that I was in, like in the Bay Area, growing up, they were in an early place in terms of the United States making sure classes are pretty integrated with those kids. They weren’t separated and would spend most of their day with us. So, I grew up pretty used to various kinds of both physical and mental differences.
Q: How was it working with Jacob Tremblay?
Diggs: He’s brilliant. I mean brilliant as a performer and just an incredible human being. He helped me a lot. It was my first film so he had to teach me how to do everything. Besides being great about making sure everyone on set was taken care of, his performance would just blow you away, every take.
Q: You primarily work with very young actors in this film; any challenges with that?
Diggs: No, not for me, I loved it. I used to be a middle school teacher so I’m pretty used to hanging out with kids of that age (laughs). But also they were all so great and professional. All of them had done more movies than I have so again it was mostly me taking a back seat and learning from them. The other thing about working with young actors is that their hours are more limited than ours are (laughs) so the days ended up being shorter for me too; which is kind of a bonus.
Q: The film is super emotional what was your first reaction to reading the script?
Diggs: I loved the script because it managed to be emotional but not feel manipulative, that was kind of my favorite thing about it. I was feeling all the feels (laughs) but I didn’t feel like I was tricked into it or that it was laid on too heavy. Everything that I was feeling was a by-product of being thrown into the world of a kid who hasn’t put up all of the emotional walls that I think we all do as we get older. But I think just the nature of the storytelling allows you to be more vulnerable and open to feeling things that maybe you haven’t felt in a while because as we get older we learn to wallow these things on.
Q: One of the many messages about this film is tolerance. How do you think we can start to install that into our youth?
Diggs: Well, I think that it can maybe start by just trying to create environments where differences are celebrated as opposed to just tolerated, as opposed to just allowed and accepted but actually celebrated. And I think once we start doing that, you begin to celebrate the real differences in people which aren’t really about how you look but about the specific things that you bring into a community. So what’s great about Auggie is how smart he is and how charismatic he is and how kind he is. Those are the things that are different and celebrated about Auggie and you pretty quickly forget the physical difference.
Q: Talk about working with this amazing director, Stephen Chbosky?
Diggs: Stephen was fantastic. He was so patient with me and showing me the ropes of how to just be in a movie but then also just the atmosphere he created on set that was so caring, and sweet and fun. And you never felt rushed or stressed and everything felt like it was all moving towards trying to tell this really beautiful story. Yeah I had an incredible time with Stephen.
The film hits theaters this Friday.
