Hand-picked by Lin-Manuel Miranda to play Alexander Hamilton, Miguel Cervantes was given the role of a lifetime when Hamilton opened in Chicago. Sitting down with ABC7 Chicago in the video below, Cervantes talks about how he and his family—wife Kelly, seven-year old son Jackson, and three-year-old daughter Adelaide—packed up their life in New York City to move to the Windy City, where everything changed.
Adelaide was diagnosed with childhood epilepsy around the same time as Cervantes was cast. Now, the parents are fighting to keep their daughter alive. Kelly is now a full-time at-home caretaker, a part of “Adelaide’s Army,” which is comprised of several doctors, nurses, and friends. “We are fighting so that no one ever has to count how many seizures happen in a day,” Cervantes says.
“I think of myself as a monkey with a cymbal, right?,” he continues. “So people can look at me. ‘Hey, look at me, look at how exciting this is!’ And then you should stop looking at me and look at my wife.”
Watch the video below and click here for more information about Kelly Cervantes' podcast, Seizing Life.