“Hamilton” star Mandy Gonzalez feels much more than satisfied to be back in the room where it happens.
Gonzalez and the rest of the hit musical’s company were thrilled last September when “Hamilton” returned to Broadway after being closed for 18 months due to COVID-19.
But it felt especially meaningful for Gonzalez, who was also making her first Broadway performance since finishing breast cancer treatment the previous year.
“When I stood on the stage for the first time, it was like, man, I’ve made it, in so many ways,” Gonzalez told the Daily News at the show’s Richard Rodgers Theatre.
“I’m on Broadway. I made it through the pandemic. I am a cancer survivor. But we all did. No matter what, we all went through a storm; it’s just we were on different boats. When I look into the audience and I feel the audience, I know that they have their own stories, too. During this time, we all went through so much. I’m just grateful and I’m inspired constantly.”
Gonzalez, 43, is a Broadway veteran of two decades who originated the role of Nina Rosario in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “In the Heights” and played the witch Elphaba in “Wicked.”
Since 2016, she’s starred in “Hamilton” as Angelica, the witty and lovelorn eldest Schuyler sister — a key role in the story about America’s founders.
Gonzalez was introduced to “Hamilton” when Miranda, who created the show, asked her to perform at a 2012 concert at Lincoln Center featuring the songs he was working on.
“When Lin calls you, you go, and I went and it was magic,” Gonzalez recalled.
“I was the first one to sing ‘Say No To This.’ He had just written that song, and so I got to sing that with him, and that was really exciting. And then he kept working, and it kept going. I was doing other things but I kept hearing about it.”
She saw “Hamilton” after it opened Off-Broadway in 2015 at the Public Theater, with Renée Elise Goldsberry playing Angelica. Goldsberry continued the role when the show opened on Broadway later that year.
“I was doing a lot of concerts at that time,” Gonzalez said. “I got the cast album. I was listening to it nonstop. I was like, ‘I’m gonna play this role one day.’ And I lucked out and got a call from (director) Tommy Kail in July of 2016 that Renée was ready to leave the show, and would I like to come take her place? And I said, ‘Yes!'”
The gig came at the perfect time for Gonzalez, who says her Broadway experience helped her embrace the big-sister role with some of the company’s younger members. Her daughter was 4 when Gonzalez joined “Hamilton,” which helped her connect with Angelica.
“She was just like the ultimate working parent, in a much more glamorous way, but I could relate with that because I know what it’s like to still continue to have a dream and also have a duty and a love for your family,” Gonzalez said. “I think that I brought so much of myself to this character.”
Gonzalez learned she had breast cancer in October 2019 after getting a mammogram. She underwent surgery after her diagnosis and started chemotherapy in January 2020, but continued performing through her treatment.
“I really had to decide during my diagnosis if I wanted to be open about it,” Gonzalez said. “I was going to have to start missing shows because of different treatments, and I decided I wanted to be very vulnerable and open about what was going on to help other people that maybe didn’t have a voice.”
The actress says the #FearlessSquad — an online movement she started in 2017 to promote inclusion — empowered her to speak about her journey and the importance of early detection.
“Because (the movement’s members) were so open to me about things they had gone through, I felt very brave and fearless to tell them what I was going through,” she said. “In doing that, it really freed me to go through this experience, but also to do more research within the breast cancer community. I found that a lot of Latina women are diagnosed at a later stage because of different things, because of lack of awareness of your family history with breast cancer.”
Gonzalez has now been cancer-free for two years, and completed her treatment in July 2020.
Last April, she released a young-adult mystery novel, “Fearless,” about a theater-loving girl who dreams of a career on Broadway. Gonzalez has a second novel in the series, “Boulevard of Dreams,” out April 5.
“It’s a lot of adventure,” Gonzalez said of the new book. “The kids go into Shubert Alley, which is the alley between 44th and 45th where all of the show posters are, and one of their phones goes into a pothole and they go to retrieve the phone. … They end up back in time, to the 1950s, and they have to find their way back.”
After making her way back to Broadway, Gonzalez couldn’t be happier.
“It has been thrilling,” Gonzalez said. “It has been like coming home.”
