If you were alive of a reasonable age between 2015 and 2016, you’ve heard of Hamilton. More likely than not, you, along with much of the rest of the world, were a little obsessed with it, Broadway fan or no. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hip-hop interpretation of the life of America’s first Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, brought to life by a cast mainly comprised of people of color, received unfathomably rapturous reviews from the moment it began off-Broadway previews. When the production moved to the Richard Rodgers Theatre on 46th Street, tickets were impossible to attain, the crowds outside the theatre even just hoping to catch a glimpse of the cast so dense the road had to be closed off. It was a modern-day Beatlemania.
One of those cast members was Renée Elise Goldsberry, who originated the role of Angelica Schuyler in the production. All of that information I recited above you likely already know, but you may be unfamiliar with the struggles Goldsberry was facing behind-the-scenes at the time, which are the subject of Chris Bolan and Melissa Haizlip’s documentary Satisfied (the title derived from the name of the show-stopping number Goldsberry performs as Angelica in the first act of Hamilton).
Satisfied lays out its thesis in the opening minutes, with Goldsberry stating that all her life, she always wanted two things: to have a career as a performer, and be a mom. That tension between having a job that requires an immense amount of time and talent (not to mention grueling schedules with a lot of traveling) and wanting to be present for your family is what the entire film reckons with, beginning with an opening that takes us back to February 2014, when Goldsberry and her husband Alexis traveled to Ethiopia to adopt their daughter. Goldsberry is determined to take some time off to be with their first-born son and new daughter— and then, she’s called to audition for a workshop called the “Hamilton Mixtape.” After she hears Miranda’s demos of the songs, she can’t say no.
What proceeds to unfold throughout Satisfied is a tale as old as time (for women, in any case), with Hamilton’s rocketship ascension (and Goldsberry becoming a household name in turn) running parallel to the actor’s fertility issues, and later struggles to be there for her children while also starring in a Broadway show 6 days a week, and doing the requisite press rounds in between. The film doesn’t question the possibility of a woman being about to both have a career and a family– that conversation, of which the answer of course is yes, has long been tread into the ground– it depicts the hardships inherent in making both those desires possible. Satisfied makes use of Goldsberry’s personal iPhone vlogs (though not so extensively for those who are vertical video averse) documenting candid moments of joy and pain (like when she discovers while performing in Hamilton at the Public Theatre that she is pregnant, a pregnancy that she later loses), and some lively editing of one montage of videos (in which Goldsberry can be seen struggling to remember what day it is) emphasizes the whirlwind pace of her life. Satisfied is far from a comprehensive biography, but it is structured in a manner that well complements the portion of Goldsberry’s story that it is telling, rewinding back to 2005 (when she had a miscarriage at five-and-a-half months pregnant) and then 2008, when she discovered she was pregnant again while playing Mimi in the final Broadway run of Rent (a successful pregnancy that resulted in her son, Benjamin).
Goldsberry’s story also unravels through archival photos and videos of her pre-Hamilton work (she describes herself as definitely being a working actor), home movies, new interviews, and— most noteworthy for Hamilton fans— never-before-seen footage from the production’s early workshops, pre-Broadway run, and Broadway tech rehearsals. These segments, which culminate in the inclusion of Goldsberry’s entire performance of “Satisfied,” clearly culled from the filmed version of the Broadway show on Disney Plus, are a stunning showcase for Goldsberry’s talents, although it’s difficult to evade the sense that they are somewhat capitalizing on Hamilton’s popularity to draw the audience in. Still, Bolan and Haizlip do a decent job keeping Goldsberry at the center of the film. Despite some aspects that bring the film close to the edge of becoming a self-congratulatory puff piece— tear-jerking moments too clearly engineered to wring emotions out of the audience, a segue to visit Goldsberry’s former drama teacher, and a tidy, all’s-well-that-ends-well conclusion— Goldsberry keeps it real. It’s impossible not to empathize with her trauma (that she talks so openly about fertility issues that are still treated as taboo in some circles goes a long way toward cracking open a larger conversation for women) and applaud her triumphs— even if you’re only here for the Hamilton content.
Satisfied had its world premiere at the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival on June 15. Runtime: 84 minutes.
Katie at the Movies 