Anthony Ramos Bombed the Audition—and Still Landed the Biggest Role of His Career

Anthony Ramos is blowing up right now. He’s front and center on every billboard, featured prominently in every ad, and playing the lead role in one of 2021’s most awaited—and critically acclaimed—movies, In The Heights, Lin-Manuel Miranda's Washington Heights-set musical. When he first read for that same role years earlier, he also blew up, but not quite in the same way. “I bombed that audition,” he says. “It was, like, horrible.” Before the movie landed in its current form at Warner Bros., it was in development with another studio; he found out later that the movie had moved to WB, and director Jon M. Chu was taking meetings. That meant he’d have another chance. “I was like, yo, I hope they burned that audition tape,” he continues. “I hope someone burned that shit, and it’s somewhere deep down in the archives where no one can find it.”

Despite bombing the big screen audition, Ramos still managed to land a version of that lead role when he was cast in a 2018 Kennedy Center production of In The Heights—which had debuted on Broadway a decade earlier, in 2008. This then made him an obvious candidate to play the part in In The Heights 2.0, which, coincidentally, right around that same time, had moved to WB and was beginning the casting process. Miranda himself had been coming to rehearsals, and helped facilitate a breakfast meeting with Chu. Does that bombed audition tape exist? Perhaps! But Chu hasn’t seen it. “Either it was so bad that it got buried and was never shown to me, or... who knows how it got lost in the shuffle,” he says.

Ramos’ story of “bombing” is almost hard to believe. Whether he’s filling Spike Lee’s shoes in Netflix’s updated She’s Gotta Have It series, playing a small role as Lady Gaga’s friend (!) in Bradley Cooper’s A Star Is Born, or even putting his signature twist on a ‘military guy’ part in Godzilla: King of the Monsters, he's been a compelling presence in varying genres over the last half decade.

Of course, his path didn’t start there. When Ramos, now 29, was in high school, acting wasn’t even on his radar. His dream, then, was to play—and eventually coach—baseball. But his talent first manifested as a party trick. “My mom would ask me to sing for, like, family events," he says on Zoom, wearing a black Vinnie’s sweatshirt that says BROOKLYN on it. "Thanksgiving. I was that kid in the family that could sing. You know, it’s like, that uncle that could do magic tricks. That was me.”

In addition to his performances in Hamilton and In The Heights, Ramos also now sings professionally; his debut album came out in 2019, and he’s released a series of pop singles in 2020 and 2021. But that’s not to say he completely left baseball behind, either. While he wound up pursuing a different dream once he earned a full scholarship to the American Musical and Dramatic Academy on New York City’s Upper West Side, he still goes to Mets games as much as he can, and even played on the softball team for Hamilton when he was part of that show’s cast.

Ramos might not be coaching baseball like he dreamed, but in a way, he’s leaning into that same mentality. “How do we work together as a team to make this the best thing we possibly can make it?” he asks. “That’s a big thing that I still take with me. And toughness, man! It’s like, you play sports, and the mantra is ‘Don’t quit.’ Don’t quit, don’t quit, don’t quit. Keep going, keep going. So that helps me push on long days.”

That don’t quit mentality has taken him a long way. Far enough, in fact, to keep pushing for a role that he thought he wouldn't never nab. By the time Ramos was in that Kennedy Center production of In The Heights and meeting with Chu, his name already had buzz the entertainment industry.

When he met with Chu, creative sparks flew immediately. Ramos describes their breakfast as “emotional” and a “really special moment,” but he didn’t get an immediate offer to star in the movie. In fact, he got an offer to star in another movie of Chu's. At that point, Ramos called the director, and laid it all on the line. “I’m willing to do whatever it takes to be part of this movie,” he pleaded. “Just tell me what you need, brother. I’ve got this other job, but if you guys are not gonna cast me, man, then it’s all good.”

That pleading wasn’t necessary. “We were ready to go with him. There was no doubt, but sometimes business affairs take a little bit,” Chu says, “So when he was like, oh I got an offer for this other movie, I was like we cannot lose this guy. If we lose this guy, we lose the movie.” One day after that call, Ramos got the official offer for In The Heights.

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Before we go any further, we should probably talk about what it is that makes In The Heights so special. Before In The Heights was a movie, it was a Broadway musical. Before In The Heights was a Broadway musical, it was a show that Miranda put together all by himself, in 1999, during his sophomore year at Wesleyan University. When Ramos says the show is Miranda’s “baby,” he's not kidding.

And like any baby, In The Heights has grown. That Wesleyan University production eventually became a Tony-winning Broadway hit, which, in the wake of Miranda’s historical, monumental hit in Hamilton, has become a uniquely-hyped movie musical, particularly after the revitalization of Hamilton fandom brought upon by last year’s release of a recorded version of the show on Disney+.

And the part of Usnavi, the rapping, ambitious, and romantic bodega owner at the center of In The Heights, is the most sacred of all of those parts. In the same way that Miranda manned the titular role of Alexander Hamilton when Hamilton made its initial run, he shepherded the role of Usnavi from the inception of In The Heights all the way through to its Broadway debut. And now that role belongs to Ramos.

Ramos and Miranda—who plays a small supporting role in the film—share a moment early on, where the two briefly cross paths and exchange pleasantries, including a handshake and what Ramos describes as a “Do your thing, brother” look from Miranda. On the gag reel, the scene continues when Miranda puts his hand in Ramos’ face, and then he enters his bodega and the entire cast and crew crack up. It’s some old fashioned, good-natured ribbing between mentor and mentee.

The moment that hit Ramos hardest with this whole thing, though, was in plain sight for everyone to see. After Miranda saw Ramos in the Kennedy Center production, he shared a five-Tweet thread on his account, describing exactly how he felt watching his first leading role be played by the man who would eventually inhabit that role on the big screen.

It’s clear that Ramos is emotional with the idea that Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote that up about what he did on stage. “That Tweet...that joint broke me up, man,” he said, looking down, off-screen, and shaking his head ever so slightly.

And even still, that doesn’t feel like the end for the In The Heights story. While movie fans have basically been waiting since the 2016 release of La La Land for an epic musical, there’s something more to In The Heights that just feels special. For Ramos, that comes in a couple different layers. Ramos notes that this story—set in Washington Heights, and with Latinos from all over, including Colombian, Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Panamanian, all singing, dancing, and taking part in a singular story about their community—is something that just felt special. “That, for me, alone was like...man,” he says, “If I can do anything in that film. Please.”

It’s also a film that actually may be more relevant now than when it was originally intended to come out a year ago. Everyone’s been locked up in their homes for about a year and a half; who doesn’t want to see a movie about people singing, dancing in thee streets, and having the hot, free, summer time of their lives right now? It’s the visual representative of how everyone feels after so much widespread isolation time. “This movie is about community! And love, and pride. And connection. Things that we’ve—that I’ve—been yearning for since we’ve been in this pandemic,” Ramos says. “Dare I say, other people probably have been too.”

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If you keep flipping around your HBO Max app you’ll be able to find Ramos doing more than just singing, rapping, and dancing in In The Heights. He’s also playing a key role in HBO’s reboot of In Treatment, the ambitious scripted series centered on one-on-one therapy sessions between a therapist and their patients. The original series featured Gabriel Byrne as the therapist, and the reboot hones in on Emmy-winner Uzo Aduba. Set right smack in our modern day, Ramos plays Eladio, a patient whose sessions take place virtually.

In Treatment was a project that represented the stars aligning all at once, says Ramos. He had just finished filming a space movie (called Distant) and was looking for a change of pace. He wanted to do something cool on T.V., since he hadn’t done anything on that medium since She’s Gotta Have It wrapped in 2017.

Mental health awareness is something that's important to him, and since he'd personally been in therapy for more than two years, he felt particularly drawn to the HBO reboot. He tells a story about how a member of his own family questioned it when he announced that he was going to begin seeing someone.

"In my family, growing up...I remember I said to someone in my family ‘I’m starting therapy.’ And they were like ‘Well, what’s wrong?’ What do you mean ‘What’s wrong?’ There’s a lot that’s wrong," he recalls. "Everybody goes through shit. Why should we need to speak to a professional, who has no skin in the game in anything that’s going on in our lives, you know what I’m saying? Where they’re just giving us the facts, and they’re giving us professional feedback on what we decide to share with them about our personal lives.

“I think there’s this stigma—especially in men of color, specifically Latino men, like ‘I ain’t going to no therapy. For what? Talk to who for what? Nah, I’m good. ‘Nah I’m good,” he says.

Despite their on-screen sessions appearing virtually, Ramos and Aduba filmed their parts on the same soundstage; they would sometimes hear one another from the other side of the room before hearing them through the in-world monitors. The two, having known one another before In Treatment due to crossing paths in the New York City theater world, already had natural chemistry. But their on-screen relationship ranges from super fun to super intense from question to question. Ramos has the attitude to make sure that the mood never loses that fun vibe when the camera isn’t rolling.

“Every morning, you wake up, and he comes in the trailer with that energy, like ‘Let’s go!’ You know? He walks around, like, he’s like, ‘What up fam?’, ready to go,” Aduba says. “And that warmth. He’s a teammate! That’s the only way I can describe Anthony. He’s a teammate. He wants to get in the trenches with you. He’s ready to rock with you no matter how hard.”

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Ramos also plays a small role in Blindspotting, the new Starz series from his Hamilton co-star Daveed Diggs. The two have been friends for a long time, and Diggs, who won a Tony for Hamilton, talks about Ramos as if his destiny within the business were a foregone conclusion. “The second I met him, it was like, well, that's a star,” he says. “That dude's a movie star, he's a TV star, he's a pop star. Like, he's all of these. He has whatever that thing is... It's not a thing that that can be stopped actually. He's a star. That dude’s always been a star. He's going to continue to be a star, and he's the right person.”

Aduba had a similar experience; she saw him in the off-Broadway production of Hamilton, and while she had no idea who he was at the time, she could tell that he had it. And getting to know him has only strengthened that opinion. “There are a lot of people who have star quality, but maybe the talent is fine. Anthony Ramos is talented. He can cross back and forth into both lanes—all lanes,” she says. “And I think that’s what makes him exceptional. He is exceptional. He is a star.”

Chu takes things even a step further, calling Ramos “the next generation of leading man” and “everything Will Smith was, and is, and the next chapter of that.” And considering he directed the likes of Henry Golding, The Rock, and Channing Tatum in his previous two feature films, what Chu says about leading men holds quite a bit of weight. “His charisma is as big as any movie star that I’ve ever seen in my life, from classic movies to modern movies,” Chu says. “He is the face of the next chapter of what a leading man is, what they represent.”

Next up for Ramos is a role in the newest installment of the Transformers franchise, which he’s currently filming in Canada with director Steven Caple Jr. and co-star Dominique Fishback.

During our first conversation he’s hesitant to say anything about the project because the ink wasn’t yet dry, but by our next chat, he tells me it’s been signed, sealed, and delivered.

“I mean, you don’t really see characters like me in those kinds of films,” he says, not long before noting that he loved the live-action movies when they first started coming out, and even loved the Beast Wars: Transformers cartoon that aired in the ‘90s. “It was Shia LaBeouf, Mark Wahlberg, Hailee Steinfeld, and me. You know? Like, that, for me, was exciting.”

And that’s just the next stop on the Anthony Ramos world tour. When I ask if he’s ever been starstruck, his quick answer is the time he met Barack Obama, before thinking a little bit and realizing that, yeah, he was a little starstruck when he first met Spike Lee and Lin-Manuel Miranda, too.

When I ask who else he wants to work with, he, again has quick answers: Steven Spielberg and Ryan Coogler. Chu says that Ramos “always has a bigger purpose to what he’s doing,” and that’s evident even just chatting with him about a couple smaller fun questions in the midst of what’s clearly shaping up to be a career blow-up. Every answer is thought out, carefully chosen, fully transparent, and real. Everything is taken seriously. Every answer has depth.

That gets me thinking again about that supposedly bombed In The Heights audition. Because let’s be real—the guy is great. Everyone in his orbit agrees that he’s great. But the idea of caring so much. Putting so much care, and effort, and heart into everything, to the point of feeling like you bombed an audition years earlier, when the outcome is that you ended up landing the lead role and absolutely nailing the performance? That might just be just the type of determination you need to become the next Will Smith—and perhaps even more.

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