TAMPA — For a few moments at the Tony Awards, Leslie Odom Jr. nearly made the world forget that a year had passed. The co-star of Hamilton, who had won for best actor in a musical in June 2016, was back in a duet with fellow winner Cynthia Erivo, belting out New York, New York.

When he won for his portrayal of Aaron Burr, Odom had been playing the role for 16 months. He had marveled at the buzz the show was generating, the fact that he had to pass through metal detectors because President Barack Obama would be in the audience.

Odom will perform on Friday at the David A. Straz Jr. Center for the Performing Arts. He'll likely dip into Autumn Leaves, Unforgettable or On a Clear Day, standards that have spoken to him since childhood, and include medleys from Jersey Boys, Rent and, yes, Hamilton.

"Hamilton was the pinnacle of the kind of success that you dream about when you're a child," Odom said in a phone interview. "Because you're in a show that's artistically fulfilling, commercially successful and culturally relevant. It's the trifecta; it really doesn't get any better than that."

Yet he left after July 9, the day his contract was up. So did creator and co-star Lin-Manuel Miranda and Phillipa Soo, who played Eliza Hamilton. Odom said he made the decision with his wife, Nicolette Robinson. It came as a relief.

"We looked at each other and it's like, what do you do after a year like that?" Odom said. "Do we want to just — I don't know, fight and claw away to have another one of those opportunities? Or get off of this ride right now, just take a moment and focus on something else that we've been putting off or neglecting for awhile?"

An unusual profit-sharing agreement made the decision easier. Odom led a group of original actors from 2013 who argued that, as workshopping co-creators in its development, they should retain a piece of the profits.

"Everybody gets into this business for a different reason," said Odom, 35. "If you're in it long enough, you're for sure going to hit a rough patch. And when you hit a rough patch, you end up having to deal with why you're in this business — if it's for fame, if it's for money or any of those things."

He was born in Queens to a salesman and a nursing home director, but grew up in Philadelphia. He practiced singing relentlessly from age 5, when his parents bought him a tape recorder, measuring what came out of the machine against an ideal voice in his head.

"I wanted to be able to think of a sound," he said. "I was listening to singers, I was mimicking and I was working out the kinks. "I wanted it to be perfect."

At 17, Odom was attending a performing arts high school when he caught his first big break, landing a part in the ensemble of RENT. The show deeply influenced both Odom and Miranda.

They met in 2012 at an opening night party for Bring It On: The Musical, for which Miranda co-wrote the music and lyrics. For a while, Miranda envisioned himself as Burr, who killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel. He changed his mind after seeing how Odom approached the role in workshops, and even began tailoring it to his strengths.

"When you really think of greats like that, you think of a Michael Jordan or a LeBron," Odom said of Miranda. "These are all people who came here with gifts, who were given certain things. But you cannot deny the thousands and thousands of hours they have practiced."

Miranda treated actors as equals, Odom said, and wanted their ideas as well as their performing skills.

"He's not someone who wants to be the only giant in the room. He wants to surround himself with giants. And so, you get a Hamilton like that. You get something where we have 16 Tony nominations and 11 Tony wins because everybody was working at the most optimum, highest levels that they'd ever been asked to work."

After a dozen years in theater, film and television (he played guest roles in CSI: Miami, Law & Order and The Good Wife but was best known as Sam Strickland in the NBC's Smash), Odom devoured the complexities of Hamilton's antihero.

"I don't always get material that good, stuff that works that well on the page," he said. "When it doesn't work as well, there are tricks you learn, little things you do to try to hide the fact that the words aren't that great."

Aaron Burr needed no such gimmicks, which would only get in the way. At first, Odom, said, the humanity in the role was "a bit frightening."

"It was really about getting all those tricks out of the way," he said, "and standing up on stage and being as vulnerable and messy and ugly and beautiful as the people in the audience watching it. I wasn't interested in playing a villain. I wanted to play a human being, I wanted to play somebody that was hard for you to write off."

The show might have done something even more important for Odom, reconnecting him to that 5-year-old boy with a tape recorder, trying to create the perfect sound.

"Hamilton gave me the opportunity to use, you know, really eight or nine or 10 different voices," he said. "I got to rap. I did that sort of brass trombone voice in The Room Where It Happened — and sort of an R&B crooner in Wait for It. It was so much fun wrapping my voice around those songs in different ways."

That white hot year at the peak of stardom, Odom marveled at how his past had shaped the present, especially those thousands of hours singing.

Today he talks about how Hamilton has set up the future. In Murder on the Orient Express, scheduled for release in November, Odom plays Dr. Arbuthnot alongside Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer and Judi Dench.

Odom released a self-titled album a year ago. Another album is in the works. Robinson, also a talented actor and singer, often sings with him and has been known to put in a surprise appearances at his cabaret shows. Their daughter, Lucille Ruby, was born April 23.

After Hamilton, this is living under the radar. But Odom has no regrets about leaving the show that still defined his career.

"It has been and continues to be the ride of my life," he said.

Contact Andrew Meacham at ameacham@tampabay.com or (727) 892-2248. Follow @torch437.