This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Robert Bannon: Are you ready? It's The Roundtable with me, Robert Bannon.

[0:15] Robert Bannon: Oh my lord, I'm so full from Thanksgiving. Are you full from Thanksgiving too? My, oh my. Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas. Happy Holidays, everybody. Robert Bannon here, and you are watching me on Black Friday right here on Broadway World, so I hope you're out at a Best Buy or a Walmart fighting someone for a clearance toaster, and I'm going to bring you some entertainment and some joy. Diamond, say hello. You have your Christmas sweater on? You're ready? Well, we are all Christmassed out here on The Roundtable. Are the stockings hung? Well, we tried. And we have a superstar here. Folks, you're not on Broadway World if you don't love our next guest, because our next guest is a Broadway superstar.

Tony Winner, Grammy Winner Leslie Odom Jr. is here. Just wait for it. Give me a minute. He'll be here. You see what I did there? This is the room where it happens. I can do this all night. Anyone got a leap of faith joke? I don't, but I can try. Well, we have a really great show for you. We have a whole month of shows planned for you. We're going to do a whole holiday extravaganza here in December. My name is Robert Bannon, and we're here Fridays on an exclusive Roundtable. And if you want to follow me, you can go to RobertandBannon on Instagram, or you can go to RobertBannon.com. I have a Christmas show coming up in New York City where you can see me live. And we have episodes every single day of The Roundtable over on my website or on Broadway Podcast Network.

We're also on YouTube. So wherever you are in the world, I'm going to force you to love me. No, and I'm so excited to be here. It has been a joy to be able to grow the show more and more. And so this Thanksgiving season, this weekend, while I'm fighting the fight in New Jersey with my brother and my pregnant sister-in-law, I want to wish you all a very happy Thanksgiving. And thank you. I'm very grateful for each and every one of you. You've made us a great success here on Broadway World and wherever we are. And I thank the guests, the publicists, Nicole and the team at Broadway World for having us here, Mr. Diamond, the whole entire crew there. We are so honored and grateful to be where Broadway gets its news.

So if you're living around this country, you know that a Tony-winning, Grammy-winning superstar of Hamilton, movie star, Academy Award nominee, Time Magazine's 100 most influential people of the year 2024, New York Times bestselling author, and millions of streams of his Christmas album, his original music, and all of that is out there. That's right. Aaron Burr, sir, Leslie Odom Jr. is here. I'm going to see him in Detroit on December 22nd. Are you going to see him? Because his Christmas tour is coming around the country. He stopped by to tell us a little bit about it and what it means to be a dad this Christmas. Take a listen. Goodness. Leslie Odom Jr. is here, everybody.

[3:01] Leslie Odom Jr.: We made it happen. We made it happen. We had some technical difficulties. You know what? I'm outside of the Detroit Fine Arts Museum and we are ready for you to come here December 22nd and I'll be in the house. Yo, I can't wait. I'm in the middle of a siren parade, as you can hear. Sorry. We love it. This is real life, folks. This is what it's like. You know, Leslie, I go back to you from ART. I go back with the boys writing Witness Uganda. I go back to Leap of Faith. I go back to In Time. Your lovely wife, you've been with us on the red carpet. We show so much love to you, but you are like Mr. Christmas. When that album came out, we were here for it. So what is a Christmas tour like with Leslie Odom Jr.?

[3:43] Leslie Odom Jr.: Oh, we're so excited. Thank you for saying that. Eight years ago, we made the first Christmas album. Really, it was a fan-prompted thing. Usually, as an artist, you are inspired to do something and you go in the lab and you make it and then you're coming to an audience and you're like, yo, please be interested in this thing. But this was the first and only thing that I've done in my career that was fan-prompted. This was something that they asked for. And so I was able to go and bring them something that they had requested. So this tour is really the first time we've done Christmas shows, of course, over the years. But this is the first Christmas tour that we've done because we also put out 2020.

I don't know if you remember, we were locked in our houses for a while. So 2020, we also, we thought it would be, we needed it. 2020, it was really our request. We came together as a team and during the time in the pandemic, we were getting tested all the time and we kind of just increased our bubble enough to get in the studio and make another Christmas album. Anyway, this is the first time that we've now lined up a tour. After those albums, the albums have become a part of people's holiday tradition. I hear about them every year, everywhere I go. There's nothing, you know, Hamilton and these Christmas albums is what I hear about the most in my career. You know, of course I remember 2020. I wanted that camouflage suit jacket that's on the cover.

Come on, it's fashion. So when you put together a set list, when we see you, if it's San Francisco, if you're going across the country, like literally across this country, symphony after symphony, how do you build a set list? What are we going to see in this show?

[5:26] Leslie Odom Jr.: Well, we start with the albums, you know, I mean, part of my, one of my favorite things about making a record is the sequencing, you know. I know that people listen to their music in all kinds of ways these days. You know, a lot of times they, you know, they pick their favorites and it goes on a playlist and they make their own albums essentially, but I still do think of albums kind of like a show in that way. And so they're sequenced in a way that I hope people will experience them at some point, kind of top to bottom. So this album, a lot of Simply Christmas we include in its sequencing. And then things changed in the second half and there's some new stuff we're going to do, some stuff we haven't recorded yet.

But it's really, I'm trying to think of it as, you know, these albums come to life. You know, I want it to feel like, at this point, you know, the albums having been out for years now, people have their, you know, they have a movie playing in their mind. They're attached to personal memories and, you know, decorating the tree and cooking and, you know, time with the kids, time with the parents. And so we are just doing our best to deliver a live version of these tunes that allows people to have the movie in their mind playing too, the whole time.

[6:54] Robert Bannon: Well, we'll be there. Listen, if you want to listen, Winter Song, Bananas. You, and speaking of Ingrid, you and Ingrid singing All I Want for Christmas, Bananas. You and your wife, Bananas. This album is bananas. You need to have it playing when you decorate your Christmas tree. So you have kids, you have your son and your daughter. So how has Christmas changed for you now that you're a dad?

[7:12] Leslie Odom Jr.: It's not about me anymore. Yeah, it's, you know, Christmas morning is, you are on as a parent. It is like, lights, camera, action. So, but they're beautiful years. And yeah, we have a seven and a three-year-old and Christmas is really, you know, it's theirs now. We do what we have to do. We stay up late. We get up early to make sure that they really have that wow moment when they come down, you know, look at the tree and, you know, see the things all wrapped up and the signs and the Santa ate the cookies. So yeah, it's not about us anymore. That's it.

[7:56] Robert Bannon: Well, you know what it is about us? You have inspired the next generation. As a teacher, the kids all know musical theater because of the work that you do. They can sing every word that you've ever sung on stage. Seeing you as an artist in Pearly last year, or the work you do on film has inspired me. Your memoir, I took screenshots of some passages you wrote because it inspires everyone. Failing Up is such an amazing book for you as an inspiring person, human being. The work you do matters and we love and appreciate you so much. So thank you for being here.

[8:19] Leslie Odom Jr.: Oh, thank you, brother. Thank you for your advocacy. And it's been so fun watching you rise and grow in this community. You're a big part of our community and we appreciate you.

[8:31] Robert Bannon: Well, I appreciate you. Send love to Nikki, send love to the babies, and I'll see you in Detroit, December 22nd. I'll be in the house.

[8:39] Leslie Odom Jr.: See you soon. Thank you, Robert.

[8:40] Robert Bannon: How sweet is that? So sweet. Such a great guy and such a great family and such a great show. I'm sure he's going to sing Up and Down and Around again. I can't wait to see it. So go check out, get your tickets, go to his website and come on down. It's the perfect thing to see. You think we topped out Broadway World with Broadway Superstardom, ye of little faith? How about you come back next Friday when right from, direct from the Thanksgiving Day Parade, direct from another Tony winner, direct from Broadway Superstar, direct from a whole new world, who is that girl I see? Laysa Longa's here next week, y'all. Oh, I don't come to play? You think I'm playing? We're not playing. We got all the best of Broadway.

We got so many more surprises for you this December, and then we'll have a whole nother year. 2025, a quarter century old, this millennium. I'm so grateful to be here. Like I said, go enjoy your holiday. You know, I say at the end of my weekly show that every single week I say there is more good than there is bad. There is more joy than there is sadness. And there is more love than there is hate. Sometimes we just have to find it. And sometimes it feels overwhelming, like it's not there. Sometimes it feels like the world is on fire and we're all upset and disappointed and scared. But at the end of the day, I truly believe that people are more good than they are bad, and good will always prevail.

It may not feel like that today, but I'm grateful for that. And I hope you can look at that too. The best is always yet to come, no matter what. Happy holidays. Join me next week. Follow me on Instagram and come and say hi. God bless you, and I'll see you again next time. Bye, everybody.