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Encounters

By KATHERINE ROSMAN

At the Richard Rodgers Theater on a rainy and humid Saturday in June, J. Quinton Johnson, 22, crossed from stage left to right, lugging the heavy overcoat worn by the character he plays in the first act of “Hamilton,” a tailor named Hercules Mulligan who spies on the British for the benefit of the revolution.

In the second act, he set aside the attitude of youthful bravado for more refined statesmanship as James Madison, Thomas Jefferson’s BFF. As Mr. Madison, Mr. Johnson carried a handkerchief and dabbed at his nose and his brow. This wasn’t mere effect. Mr. Johnson had a bad cold.

After this matinee, he raced to his apartment in Midtown Manhattan to rest and gulp Gatorade before the evening show. Aside from this route, he doesn’t really know his way around town.

“I never really planned to live in New York, I had never even thought about it,” he said a few weeks earlier on a walk in Central Park.

It was a very hot day, but Mr. Johnson, tall and handsome with long gangly arms and a neatly trimmed Afro that he often tucks into an A. HAM baseball cap, was game for a stroll. “I’m from Texas,” he had texted. “This ain’t nothing.”

Specifically Athens, Tex., a small town in the eastern part of the state where he grew up in a close-knit family and first learned to sing, dance and perform by watching Michael Jackson videos. He moved to Austin after receiving a scholarship to study musical theater at the University of Texas. While there, he attended an open audition for the Richard Linklater film, “Everybody Wants Some!!” and was cast as a ballplayer.

Mr. Johnson had sent Mr. Linklater a spoof video of himself in the back seat of a car wearing a Jheri-curl wig. “This guy is just a natural-born performer,” Mr. Linklater said.

When in Los Angeles promoting “Everybody Wants Some!!” in late 2015, Mr. Johnson was called for a coming audition at Lionsgate, the entertainment company that was casting an updated “Dirty Dancing,” remade for television. They were looking for a romantic interest for the character played by Sarah Hyland of “Modern Family.” After two auditions, Mr. Johnson got the part.

Just before heading to the Great Smoky Mountains, where “Dirty Dancing” was being rehearsed and filmed in spring 2016, Mr. Johnson learned that the film was to be choreographed by Andy Blankenbuehler, who has won two Tonys for his work with Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator of “Hamilton.” “I was like what?” Mr. Johnson said.

Several months earlier, the cast album of “Hamilton” had been released. Mr. Johnson — who won the state finals of a poetry-interpretation contest in high school and played in a college production of Mr. Miranda’s previous show, “In the Heights” — became obsessed: memorizing every word, posting videos of himself rapping the lyrics.

Throughout rehearsals, Mr. Johnson dropped hints about his love of “Hamilton” when in Mr. Blankenbuehler’s earshot and, less subtly, carried around with him “Hamilton: The Revolution,” the book written by Mr. Miranda, with Jeremy McCarter, including the music and an annotated libretto.

Amid the scene blocking, Mr. Johnson received a text from Mr. Linklater, who knew of his “Hamilton” fixation.

“Rick tells me he has a ticket for me to go to ‘Hamilton,’” Mr. Johnson recalled, “and I say, ‘Yes, let’s go, it’s on a Saturday and I’m not working.’ And then Andy Blankenbuehler is like, ‘Nope, I need you for a rehearsal,’ and I’m like, ‘Gee thanks, Andy Blankenbuehler, I thought you were cool!’”

After seeing “Hamilton” without Mr. Johnson, Mr. Linklater texted him: “Q you are definitely in this. This play has got your name all over it.”

During a break from filming a big “Dirty Dancing” number, Mr. Johnson sat down at the piano and started to bang out the opening chords to “Alexander Hamilton,” the play’s first song.

“I just went for it,” he said.

Mr. Blankenbuehler walked over and began to perform the accompanying choreography. (Ms. Hyland caught some of the action on video.)

“He played all the roles,” Mr. Blankenbuehler said. “It was a classic, perfect audition, even though it wasn’t even an audition.”

He arranged for Mr. Johnson to try out for the producers of “Hamilton.”

All of this was before Mr. Johnson finally saw the play (his first time seeing a Broadway show), which finally happened about a week before it would win 11 Tony Awards. “It was lit,” he said. He bought a souvenir, the “A. HAM” baseball cap.

After “Dirty Dancing,” Mr. Johnson went back to Texas to contemplate his future while shooting the AMC series “The Son,” starring Pierce Brosnan. Then Mr. Linklater cast Mr. Johnson alongside Steve Carell, Bryan Cranston and Laurence Fishburne in his new film, “Last Flag Flying,” a sort-of sequel to the 1973 Jack Nicholson vehicle, “The Last Detail.”

“Last Flag Flying” rehearsed in Los Angeles, where Mr. Johnson was asked to audition again for “Hamilton,” this time performing the part of Hercules Mulligan/James Madison. He was summoned back two days later to be seen by the director and musical director. “It is the callback,” Mr. Johnson recalled, having by now strolled out of Central Park and onto Broadway, where he wove through pedestrians, only losing pace when a street saxophone player caught his ear.

“They have me sing the Hercules Mulligan parts,” Mr. Johnson said. “Then they ask me to do Lafayette and Jefferson.” Then they asked him to sing more. Mr. Johnson suggested Stevie Wonder’s “Knocks Me Off My Feet.” The show’s musical director, Alex Lacamoire, began playing it on the piano.

“Alex does a perfect audition cut of it off the top of his head and we’re all just vibing,” Mr. Johnson said. “It no longer feels like an audition.”

Mr. Johnson received an official email alerting him that he was under consideration for the touring cast of the play, which is in San Francisco and will open in Los Angeles later this summer.

Then there was silence, weeks of it. He was back in Texas, packing up to head to Pittsburgh to shoot “Last Flag Flying.”

Then he got a call from one of his agents. “How would you like to make your Broadway debut in ‘Hamilton’?” she asked him.

“I was like, that’d be great, but it seems like kind of an irrelevant question,” he said, with a laugh, and then headed into a rehearsal for “Hamilton.”