Conrad Ricamora on Revisiting ‘Here Lies Love’ Musical for Broadway and Making His Dad Proud (Exclusive)

Conrad Ricamora takes a walk down memory lane in his latest Broadway show.

Before the actor, 44, hit it big with How to Get Away with Murder, Ricamora originated the role of Ninoy Aquino, a Philippine senator whose murder sparked the People Power Revolution, in the musical Here Lies Love. The propulsive and inventively staged show, about former Filipina First Lady Imelda Marcos, first played Off-Broadway at The Public Theater in New York City. It’s now on Broadway, with Ricamora reprising the part that launched his career.

Below, Ricamora (in an interview conducted before the Screen Actors Guild went on strike July 13) discusses revisiting the musical, which is based on a concept album by David Byrne and Fatboy Slim.

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PEOPLE: How is the run going so far?

Ricamora: It’s been going really, really well. I’ve been treating it as if I grew up playing tennis but then treating it as if every night is the finals of a Grand Slam tournament. And just taking care of my body, eating healthy, getting lots of sleep, warming up properly. The interesting thing has been I’ve been redoubling down on Ninoy and the character and rereading his letters and visiting the video footage of him.

How is this run differing from your experience at The Public?

It feels like the bones of the show are still the same. It just feels like we’re deepening and specifying a lot of the storytelling. Because we’ve more than quadrupled the audience, the amount of energy that’s been contained in the four walls of that building feels just amplified every single night. So it’s everything that it always was, the seeds of it are still there, but it’s just amplified and turned up.

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Here Lies Love was arguably your first big break as an actor. Does it feel surreal to be revisiting this after all the success you’ve had — from How to Get Away with Murder to the movie Fire Island?

I did the third workshop at Williamstown of Here Lies Love 11 years ago. And all of the experiences that I’ve had as an actor have, I feel made me a better actor, made me better at what I do.

And learning how to navigate eight shows a week as well, I’ve learned over the past 11 years how to do that. The King and I was a year and a half long run, and that taught me a lot about sustaining a show for eight shows a week for that long. So I definitely feel I’ve been able to bring all of that experience into what I’m doing now.

Your dad was born in the Philippines. What’s it been like sharing this experience with him?

I think because of the sacrifices that immigrants make when they come to another country and when they come to America, they don’t always want to talk. I mean, I can feel my dad not wanting to talk about the sacrifices that he made when he first came here and the way that he had to let go of the Philippines in order to become an American. I mean, he enrolled in the U.S. military when he was 18 years old and served in the air force for the United States for over 20 years, and he very much became an American.

But he was born and spent the first 10 years of his life in the Philippines. And when this show came around, this pride that I’d never seen in him before came forward about where he was born and about the story that I was telling on stage. He doesn’t really want to talk about it ’cause he is a quieter guy. And being a military guy, everything that comes with that that you think would come with that comes with him as well. But I could feel this sense of pride that he had. I mean, he saw Here Lies Love, what was it, 15 times already!

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Has Broadway grown more diverse since you first came onto the scene?

I guess so. I mean, it’s hard to say because I only moved to New York with… I mean, I graduated from grad school and started the workshop of Here Lies Love two weeks later. So this show has always been a part of my New York experience. I guess, for me, I’ve never been a part of a show that has featured an all Asian-American cast that wasn’t centered around a white character.

But typically when we as Asian American actors have existed on stage in American theater, it’s been about a white person’s journey with our Asianness and this is not that at all. I mean, that takes a toll on you as an Asian-American actor over years and years and years of doing those kinds of shows. You just start to feel very, very othered, and we don’t have to even visit that at all with this show.

Here Lies Love is now playing on Broadway.

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Source: HIS Education