Kennedy Center President Richard Grenell reacts to Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeffrey Seller canceling ‘Hamilton’ run over Trump takeover: “This is a publicity stunt that will backfire.“

Slide 1. From Grenell’s X account

Slides 2-4. Original statement from Jeffrey Seller posted on the Hamilton Musical instagram account

Additional coverage:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/05/theater/hamilton-kennedy-center-trump-miranda.html

Excerpt:

“This latest action by Trump means it’s not the Kennedy Center as we knew it,” the show’s creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda, said in a joint interview on Wednesday with its lead producer, Jeffrey Seller. “The Kennedy Center was not created in this spirit, and we’re not going to be a part of it while it is the Trump Kennedy Center. We’re just not going to be part of it.”

Mr. Seller said the “Hamilton” team believed that Mr. Trump “took away our national arts center for all of us.”

“It became untenable for us to participate in an organization that had become so deeply politicized,” he said. “The Kennedy Center is for all of us, and it pains me deeply that they took it over and changed that. They said it’s not for all of us. It’s just for Donald Trump and his crowd. So we made a decision we can’t do it.”

Richard Grenell, the Kennedy Center’s new president, called the cancellation “a publicity stunt that will backfire” in a post on social media. He accused Mr. Miranda of being “intolerant of people who don’t agree with him politically” and said that it was clear that he and Mr. Seller “don’t want Republicans going to their shows.”