You wouldn’t know it from his bombastic stage performances, but Daveed Diggs thinks of himself as shy. In Oakland, California, he grew up shy and he still is that way today, he says.
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One of the stars of the recent Disney live-action version of The Little Mermaid (Diggs plays Sebastian, the crab), the musician-actor-and-personality would make up skits as a kid, like for his mother, who worked nights as a club DJ, or other family members around the house. Looking back on it, Diggs says, he’s not entirely sure where this instinct came from, but it’s nevertheless emblematic of his constant desire to perform, even from a young age.
Diggs found a home in the theater, working his way up and landing a role in the now-legendary musical, Hamilton, playing both Thomas Jefferson and the Marquis de Lafayette. And Diggs’ next project is hosting to new singing competition podcast from Audible, Breakthrough, which launched June 1.
“I was really shy as a kid,” Diggs tells American Songwriter. “But I [also] really like people. I’m one of those extroverted introverts or introverted extroverts, or whatever. But I learned pretty early that being on stage gave me a reason to be around people that wasn’t about me. So, it was a little less frightening.”
The play, the performance itself, gave Diggs an excuse to be engaging. It could melt his shyness away in the moment. He performed in plays in high school. It was “always just my thing,” he says. Still, Diggs never thought life as an actor would be a career. In the Bay Area, there are lots of opportunities to be a creative person, but branches of big entertainment industries are harder to find.
Diggs always just wanted to keep making stuff with his friends and he’d “figure the rest out.” That instinct has led him to be a star today. But it wasn’t always easy. Coming up, there are choices to make. For Diggs, who showed aptitude on stage and as a musician, rapper and lyricist, some thought he had to drop one for the other.
“I remember a couple people both in college and after,” Diggs says, “this college director I worked with one time—I was doing some playback in the Bay and the director was working with me, he was like, ‘You’re really great. But there’s a long line [for] the things you do and you’re going to have to choose one.’”
Turns out Diggs handled those two talents just fine, with stage performance and rap skills proving very important in his role as the quick-tongued Marquis or Jefferson. He never believed that he had to choose, if for no other reason than he never thought either would be a career. Maintaining skill at both gave him the chance of a lifetime.
Diggs’ journey with music (and entertainment) began early. His dad loved music and collected it. And his mom was a local Bay Area DJ. Records were always spinning in his childhood home, and he loved it. The now-41-year-old Diggs grew up with ’70s funk, disco and jazz.
When he was about seven years old, the first album from MC Hammer, who was also from the Bay, dropped and it made an impact on Diggs. All of a sudden, rap music, which his parents didn’t listen to, was his. Around that same time, he began to play alto saxophone in school. Songwriting came later, around 13. In high school, Diggs was also a track star, a skilled hurdler, and a self-described technician of the sport. There are some similarities between his athletic ability and his stage presence.
“Hurdles is for sure a rhythm game,” Diggs says. “There’s a similar kind of problem-solving involved. Also a rhythm element, too. I was never the fastest sprinter on the track, but I was a really good hurdler. It’s similar to the way I make music, too. I’m really technically focused and I just figure out the rest as I go.”
Diggs certainly has gone far. A Tony Award winner, he has become a household name thanks to Hamilton. He’s also known for his Sub Pop Records band, Clipping, which has new music on the way, Diggs says, as well as for roles on TV like the show, Snowpiercer. His multi-hyphenate existence in Hollywood, he says, is largely due to the success of Hamilton. After the show became a worldwide phenomenon, Diggs says he was approached about new roles. But instead of people trying to pigeonhole him into this or that, they asked him what he wanted to do.
“No one was trying to box me in,” he says. “I only learned how rare that is later.”
Now, as the host of the Breakthrough podcast, Diggs is endeavoring into new realms. What Diggs says he enjoys most about the show is that it takes you behind the curtain into the five contestants’ process. For him, it isn’t about the possible win or the effect the show might have on the singers’ social media. Instead, it’s about being close to the process of becoming a professional artist that intrigued him.
“I find it so fascinating,” Diggs says. “The more nuts-and-bolts the better. That’s the stuff I’m interested in. Artists are amazing. And I am well aware that there are incredible artists out there making incredible things that I don’t know about.”
Everything about the show is “blind,” meaning Diggs didn’t see any of the five singers. He didn’t even see the show’s two judges—Kelly Rowland and Sara Bareilles. Like The Voice and The Masked Singer, the singing is the point, not what the person looks like. But unlike those shows, Breakthrough is 100% auditory. And looking to the future, Diggs says there will surely be more on his plate—whether it’s the new Clipping material, another show, play, movie or hosting job. Either way, he’s glad he gets to participate in a diverse array of art. But music, he says, is often what ties it all together or even excites him most.
“It’s the thing that I feel like is most directly connected to our souls,” Diggs says. “It’s the quickest way into our emotional state, it’s the quickest way into our mental state. You hear a song and it triggers things for you, it puts you there immediately. It’s a very magical thing.”
Photo by Dana Burkart / Courtesy FerenComm
