I have a recognizable silhouette.
Daveed Diggs
Everybody from the Bay has a superiority complex because we’re dope.
Daveed Diggs
Being an emcee onstage is mostly about crowd control, about monitoring energy levels.
Daveed Diggs
If a project feels good to you, say yes. And do it with everything that you have and hope that the outcome is good.
Daveed Diggs
As a kid, you don’t have a ton of spaces where you are honored, where what you think is honored and what you say is revered.
Daveed Diggs
I was really aware, even while it was happening, that the discovery of arts education in my life sort of saved my life.
Daveed Diggs
Writing rap songs is about flow, about one word blending seamlessly into the next and creating a thing that is possible to perform in a way that feels natural.
Daveed Diggs
Broadway was weird.
Daveed Diggs
I love that ‘Black-ish’ is a pretty traditional sitcom, structurally. It functions like the sitcoms from the ’80s and ’90s that I grew up with.
Daveed Diggs
My mom is a white Jewish lady, and my dad is black. The cultures never seemed separate – I had a lot of mixed friends. When I was young, I identified with being Jewish, but I embraced my dad’s side, too.
Daveed Diggs
The fact that rap has a strict meter and stays to a click means that you have to make your thoughts concise.
Daveed Diggs
There’s no reason for somebody who’s good at writing rap to be good at freestyling. They’re different parts of your brain. You can develop both skills. I’m a much better writer.
Daveed Diggs
That’s the great thing about being a teenager. You think you’re a genius.
Daveed Diggs
I was so stressed, man. When I was 17, I was so worried about what the hell was going to happen.
Daveed Diggs
The reason you write something that is exciting and visceral is to force people to hear what you have to say, especially if you’re in any kind of marginalized community where people don’t want to listen. You have to come up with tricks to make them listen.
Daveed Diggs
There’s this thing about authenticity when you rap, right? Whether or not it’s real, it has to feel real.
Daveed Diggs
Acting is about finding truth and finding the way to convey the truth.
Daveed Diggs
I think this idea of a big break is a lie.
Daveed Diggs
Being multiracial has allowed me to feel comfortable walking in all different circles.
Daveed Diggs
I felt so loved and taken care of, and that’s a huge part of the reason I’m able to do what I do.
Daveed Diggs
Some people get a Broadway show, and that’s their end game, and they want to sit there for as long as possible. And some people have other things they want to do with their life.
Daveed Diggs
I’m fascinated with the regionality of rap music.
Daveed Diggs
At some point, I’ll do more McDonald’s commercials if I have to.
Daveed Diggs
To walk into a casting room full of people who look like you is a crazy thing. What is the thing that necessitates all of us having the exact same shade of skin and having the same hair? What about this deodorant commercial needs that?
Daveed Diggs
I can jump really high, yeah. I’m proud of that. I’ll take it.
Daveed Diggs
The act of being nice to somebody at Starbucks is actually a huge thing. It’s a real change you can effect in somebody’s life every day.
Daveed Diggs
I’ve been sort of gentrification-obsessed. Right before I left Oakland in 2012, I was feeling it. Now I go back sporadically, and the change is drastic.
Daveed Diggs
History is about who tells it.
Daveed Diggs
That’s the great thing about how ‘SVU’ works. They work with so many Broadway actors, they are very used to getting us out in time for the show.
Daveed Diggs
I think people understand I’m not actually the real Thomas Jefferson.
Daveed Diggs
I get excited to create things that don’t exist in the same world as ‘Hamilton’ because that world is really well done and doesn’t need me to inform it anymore.
Daveed Diggs
It’s funny because as a rapper, there is – and this is something that Clipping challenges all the time – there is this idea about authenticity as a rapper, in the fact that you rap things that are yours. That’s not what doing a play is. You’re interpreting somebody else’s words.
Daveed Diggs
If you do enough rap shows, you get a pretty good sense of an audience. You start to develop this sense of what a feeling of a room or a group is.
Daveed Diggs
I feel like, anytime I’m onstage, I tend to feel very connected with people in the audience or with the sort of heartbeat or tempo of the audience.
Daveed Diggs
Oftentimes, it feels like we spend so much of our life waiting to make art, waiting for somebody to let us do something. You don’t really have to do that. You can make it all the time. And 99 percent of the time, it’s not going to be a big deal on a global scale. But 100 percent of the time, it’s going to make you feel amazing.
Daveed Diggs
The tricky thing about fast raps is not really the delivery of them; it’s the writing of them, with consonants close enough together that you don’t trip up over them.
Daveed Diggs
Being with a bunch of people who never take a day off means that you’re not taking a day off.
Daveed Diggs
I majored in theater. I did plays. But musicals were not my thing.
Daveed Diggs
To be rapping in a musical on Broadway is just – that sentence doesn’t make any sense in my brain.
Daveed Diggs
The fact that I got to do the ‘Hamilton’ BET Cypher is a totally crazy thing because I’ve watched the BET Cyphers since it started. I’ve seen every one. I study them. Because I’m a rapper. It’s what you do.
Daveed Diggs
Daveed Diggs is a very nervous person.
Daveed Diggs
I have this thing. I can rap really fast. I can rap really, really fast. It’s a thing I’m good at and I’ve trained myself to do; it’s a thing I do in the Bay Area.
Daveed Diggs
I didn’t aspire to be on Broadway.
Daveed Diggs
I think it’s important that your work is in conversation with artists in your community.
Daveed Diggs
Neither of my parents live in Oakland anymore. They both got priced out.
Daveed Diggs
My parents are not together, but they were both always around.
Daveed Diggs
I’m aware that not everybody gets that feeling of ease walking through the world that I have.
Daveed Diggs
My favorite Prince album is ‘Sign o’ the Times.’
Daveed Diggs
I make the energy to go out. You can’t let the Broadway schedule run you.
Daveed Diggs
I have all of Kendrick Lamar on vinyl.
Daveed Diggs
As a kid, I was very shy.
Daveed Diggs
I liked being on stage because it gave me a reason to be around people. The other great thing about acting is it allows you to imagine circumstances different from your own. I was a poor Bay Area kid getting to pretend to be a Russian aristocrat.
Daveed Diggs