Nik Walker wasn’t fond of “Hamilton” at a time when everybody else was in love with the century’s most groundbreaking piece of theater.
Walker, who received classical Shakespearean training while studying at New York University, eschewed hip-hop for rock. “ ‘Rent’ was more my speed,” he says.
He was a bit envious, too, of the original “Hamilton” cast and replacements, actors like Ephraim M. Sykes and Okieriete “Oak” Onaodowan, who had been his castmates in the musical “Motown.” “These were my boys,” Walker says. “All of a sudden these guys are superstars. You couldn’t escape them.”
A similar attitude, perhaps, to founding father Aaron Burr, Walker’s character in the second national tour of “Hamilton,” which plays its first Utah run at the Eccles Theater in Salt Lake City on April 11-May 6.