A Drink With Daveed Diggs

The Hamilton breakout and Snowpiercer star peers into the future—of manhood, humanity and much in between

- Ira Madison III

Daveed Diggs is drinking bourbon on the rocks — Woodford Reserve, to be exact — as we sit in a 1970s-chic booth at the popular East Los Angeles bar Blind Barber. The drink is one you might associate with a laid-back man’s man at ease and in the moment. And though the signifiers from a bygone era are fitting, they hardly sum up the person in front of me.

Diggs appears to be at home here but not because he subscribes to some rakish Rat Pack ideal. The 38-year-old Oakland native was raised to embrace a more complex sense of identity. That much is apparent when you meet him, with his omnipresent grin and abundant Afro of curls.

The performer, who came up in theater and landed Grammy and Tony awards for his work in the Broadway megahit Hamilton, is uniquely qualified to usher in a new future for depictions of masculinity. This May he’ll star in TNT’s Snowpiercer — a television adaptation of the 2013 sci-fi film from director Bong Joon Ho (whose latest movie, Parasite, made him the only person of color nominated for a 2020 best-director Oscar). Diggs co-wrote and starred in his own film — 2018’s Blindspotting, earning him an Independent Spirit Award nomination for acting — but with the new gig he’s finally getting the opportunity to show his version of a mainstream leading man. For Diggs, this evolution comes with the responsibility to make good use of his growing platform.