UVA Today

In reality, Odom and Ryan hit topics both heavy and light, talking about everything from when Odom first discovered “Hamilton” – the Broadway megahit that rocketed him to stardom as Aaron Burr – to his first visit to UVA in October 2017, when he performed at UVA’s Bicentennial Launch Celebration just a few months after the Aug. 11 and 12 white supremacist rallies.

Odom opened the conversation by saying how much UVA students and the UVA community impressed him on that first trip.

“I couldn’t wait to get here because I wanted to meet you, I wanted to see who you were, face to face… and you guys showed up. You showed me who you were,” he said. “I could say the same for this invitation. I couldn’t wait to come back, to see how you are doing, how you are healing, where those conversations are now.”

This time, Odom came to UVA as the latest speaker in the President’s Speaker Series for the Arts, a series that has included comedian and alumna Tina Fey and “Breaking Bad” actor Bryan Cranston.

UVA Vice Provost for the Arts Jody Kielbasa spoke about the President’s Speaker Series for the Arts, which has previously brought stars like Tina Fey and Bryan Cranston to Grounds.

Jody Kielbasa, the vice provost for the arts, called the series “an opportunity for UVA to bring internationally renowned artists to speak about their lives and careers and share their stories about the impact art can have on our lives and our world.”

Before the event, Ryan asked the student body to submit questions.

Several turned in video messages, asking Odom about his experience as an African-American actor on Broadway, “Hamilton,” and the legacy he hopes to leave for those behind him.

Talking about the first time he heard “Hamilton” at an early reading in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., Odom compared it to falling in love.

“My favorite quote in the world is, ‘An artist spends their entire life trying to get back to the place where their heart was first opened up,’” he said. “I didn’t understand that quote until I heard the first sixteen bars of ‘Hamilton.’”

When a student asked him about playing Aaron Burr, a white man and Founding Father in a country that condoned slavery at the time, Odom said it was a powerful experience, hard for him to fully understand or articulate.

“As a descendent of chattel slavery in this country, to take the story and tell it how I wanted to, to wrap my arms around the throat of that story and wield it how I wanted to, there is something about that exchange that the audience is feeling, that Americans are feeling,” he said. “They are feeling that audacity and it is doing something.”

Odom had plenty of advice for students and aspiring artists, especially about the value of being willing to fail.

“It is really just willingness to fail that got me wherever I was trying to go,” he said. “If you are scared of failure or scared of looking ridiculous, you never get to see your real limits or find the person that is going to catch you when you fall.”

Tongue-in-cheek, Ryan asked Odom how he, as UVA’s president, could help his students fail more.

Odom laughed, then seriously encouraged students to remember that college is not just about the grades they receive.

“As a student, make it about the acquiring of knowledge, of experiences, the fun, the joy of this environment,” he said. “This is such a wonderful time in your life.”

He thrilled the audience by giving two quick performances at the end of his talk. One was  a joking rendition of his “Nationwide” commercial with Ryan, who by his own admission is not a natural singer.

Then, Odom took the mic for a soulful solo cover of Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young.”

Its lyrics – such as “May your heart always be joyful, and a song always be sung, and may you stay forever young” – seemed particularly appropriate for an arena full of college students, and Odom closed with a little improvisation of his own, in reference to UVA’s matchup with Duke that night – “may the game be won.” 

It earned him the last of many laughs for the afternoon, and a huge standing ovation as he brought a UVA crowd to its feet for a second time in as many years.