Following a recent matinee performance of the blockbuster musical "Hamilton," co-star Daveed Diggs is holding court in the center of the "Hamilton" stage, pressing the flesh, flashing his wide smile for selfies with a few lucky star-struck fans allowed to linger after the rest of the audience has been sent away. The wild-haired performer, whom many say steal the show as both the speed-rapping Marquise de Lafayette and the flashy Thomas Jefferson, is the odds-on favorite to bring home the Tony Sunday for best featured actor in a musical.

But in a show with no shortage of breakout performances -- seven actors are up for Tonys -- Diggs' own favorite is that of Okieriete Onaodowan, the West Orange-raised performer who also plays a dual role: the swaggering spy Hercules Mulligan ("Busta Rhymes meets Donald O'Connor," read the casting notice) in the first act, and the professorial detail man James Madison in the second.

"He is so transformative," Diggs says. "As Hercules Mulligan, he has such a huge presence, and then as James Madison, he just disappears."

As if on cue, Onaodowan, 28, the son of Nigerian immigrants, quietly emerges from backstage, hands thrust in the pockets of his pinstriped pants, a cap over his close-cropped hair. Six feet tall and broad-chested -- he's a former football player -- he is more Mulligan than Madison in real-life. But he says he takes his greatest joy in embodying both men over the course the show.

"I don't want to be anyone but me, but as a versatile as possible," he says a little while later, polishing off a platter of smoked alligator in puff pastry, a glistening slab of pork belly and a mountain of short ribs and cheese grits at a Theater District restaurant. (There's a reason he's known as the Incredible Oak.)

"I want to exercise all my muscles. I want to do plays. I want to do everything."

He's well on his way. Since snagging and helping develop the double role in "Hamilton" before the show's Off-Broadway premiere at the Public Theater last year, he has beatboxed at the White House, traveled to Israel for the Forbes 30 Under 30 summit, and posed for photos with fans ranging from Usher to Bill Gates to Louis C.K. to his own idol Dave Chappelle.

And just recently he was asked to play Kristoff in a lab version of the upcoming stage adaptation Disney's "Frozen," as sure a thing as possible on Broadway. It doesn't ensure him the role in the musical, scheduled to hit Broadway in 2018, but it's certainly a sign that Onaodowan has arrived after years as a struggling actor.

"He just needed to perform," says Craig Champagne, his West Orange High School English teacher and mentor who has kept in touch since Onaodowan's graduation in 2005. "I don't mean that in terms of ego. You have to eat, sleep, drink, have sex. He needed to perform."

Echoing, perhaps unconsciously, the show's signature call to arms "I am not throwing away my shot," Champagne adds, "I don't think he could imagine his life not doing it, that this was it. You get one chance."

'Up in it, lovin' it'

As much as "Hamilton" is a history pageant freed of fossilized assumptions, it also a portrait of dueling temperaments -- the volcanic ambitions and desperate talents of the orphaned immigrant Alexander Hamilton versus Princeton scion Aaron Burr's cold-bloodedness and which-way-the-wind-blows caution.

The meditation on duality extends to the casting, in which Onaodowan and Diggs, as Hamilton's compatriots Mulligan and Lafayette in the first act, become his antagonists in the second as James Madison and Thomas Jefferson.

Mulligan, a garrulous Irish-born tailor, was among Hamilton's first friends in America, and as a tailor, he eavesdropped on British officers and was able to pass crucial information to Hamilton during the war. ("His name is just the best rapper moniker I ever heard in my life," Miranda writes in "Hamilton: The Revolution," the musical's companion book. "So he gets the most fun punchlines.") Born into a wealthy slaveholding family from Virginia, James Madison, on the other hand, was brilliant but small and sickly.

In the first act of "Hamilton," the actor's muscled frame is packed into a voluminous green suede duster with a knit cap pulled low over his forehead -- Onaodowan's personal signature, lifted by costume designer Paul Tazewell, who defines the "Hamilton" aesthetic as period from the neck down, modern from the neck up.

As Mulligan, Onaodowan brays his intro, all bluster: "Brrrah brraaah! I am Hercules Mulligan, up in it, lovin' it, yes I heard ya mother said, "Come again?" Lock up ya daughters and horses, of course it's hard to have intercourse over four sets of corsets." As Madison, though, Onaodowan's coarse rasp dissolves into a genteel professorial cadence.

"Ideally I wanted it to be a double take," Onaodowan says. "I wanted you to forget and that at some point realize it's the same person."

'In New York you can be a new man'

Always big for his age and powerfully built, Onaodowan started playing football at West Orange High School, but he fractured his femur horsing around with some friends. It was six months before he could walk again, and with football no longer an option, he joined the school's Jubilee Choir and got involved in the theater program. "To stay out of trouble, more or less," he explains.

"I don't know if he ever handed me an essay on time," Champagne recalls with a laugh. "He didn't need to write an essay about 'Beowulf' or Shakespeare. What he needed was an ear. The best thing I did was never collect an essay from him."

Okieriete Onaodowan played Oberon in "Midnight Madness," a musical adaptation of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" for the New Jersey Youth Theatre.

Onaodowan went on to win a spot in the New Jersey Youth Theatre, the well-regarded musical theater training ground then based at NJPAC. But he clashed with his parents about pursuing acting as a career; they pushed for college.

So he auditioned for and was accepted into Rutgers' competitive Mason Gross School of the Arts. He left after a year. There were auditions to attend, couches to surf, and, despite leaving school, more to learn. He remained with the New Jersey Youth Theatre, starring as Coalhouse Walker Jr. in the group's widely-praised 2006 production of "Ragtime," and later worked as an assistant teacher under Janeece Freeman Clark.

"No matter who was the teacher, he would take out a notebook and he would taken down notes himself," Freeman Clark remembers. "Here he was in the role of assistant teacher, but he always considered himself a student. Some people reach the point where they feel like they've arrived. I still don't think he's at that point. I think he still considers himself a student, always learning."

Roles trickled in -- 2010's off-off-Broadway production of "The Last Days of Judas Iscariot," (he played Pontius Pilate) and 2011's "Ruined," the Pulitzer-winning play at La Jolla Playhouse. That same year, he also scored an ensemble spot in the first national tour of "American Idiot" and made his Broadway debut the next year in the ensemble of "Cyrano de Bergerac." In 2013, it was a hefty role in "The Brothers Size" at San Diego's Old Globe, and then he moved up to a small role as Apollo Creed's cornerman (and Creed understudy) in the musical "Rocky," which opened in March 2014.

The show's producers posted its closing notice on July 15. The next day, the Public Theater posted a casting notice for "Hamilton."

'Wait for it, wait for it'

"Hamilton" had been in the works since 2009, when Miranda debuted what would become the opening song of the show at the White House Poetry Jam. He had a close-knit circle of collaborators helping develop "Hamilton," many of them veterans of his Tony-winning Broadway musical "In the Heights," including actors Christopher Jackson and Javier Munoz, director Thomas Kail, and musical director Alex Lacamoire.

Onaodowan came on board in 2014 for a lab before the show's Off-Broadway run; he was so outside the "Hamilton" circle that he had an entire conversation with Lacamoire believing he was Miranda.

While Miranda & Co. had strong ideas for Mulligan, their James Madison was less defined -- and Onaodowan relished developing the character. "It's great to have that freedom," he says. "It feels good to create, and to actually have input, and your choices are your choices. My walk is my walk because that's what motivated me to move."

(After a behind-the-curtain struggle with producers, Onaodowan and more than two dozen original "Hamilton" cast members recently won financial recognition for their roles in developing the show that turns a profit of about $600,000 a week, according to the New York Times. That could mean $10,000 a year each, and potentially much more. "I am not talking about that," Onaodowan says politely but very firmly.)

"Hamilton" cast contracts expire in July, and there has been much speculation about who will be leaving amid what must be high-stakes contract renegotiations (Miranda is mostly likely among those departing). "I'll see how I feel," Onaodowan says, "if my spirit needs to stay, if my spirit needs to go."

That's not necessarily a dodge. Onaodowan recently took part in Freeman Clark's Broadway Buddy program, run through her Vanguard Theater Company, in which which theater professionals mentor up-and-coming artists, particularly those of color.

He worked with Marcus Beckett, a young black actor from East Orange. "One piece of advice that he gave me, both in performing and in life, if you are constantly doing something and the intention is not behind it, stop doing it."

Okieriete Onaodowan, second from left, as Hercules Mulligan in "Hamilton," with Daveed Diggs as Marquis de Lafayette, left, Anthony Ramos as John Laurens, second from right, and Lin-Manuel Miranda as Alexander Hamilton.

When asked whether he'd like to take a crack at any of the other parts in "Hamilton," Onaodowan demurs, although he admits he does covet Burr's lush song, "Wait For It": "The idea that you are in control of yourself. Finding patience and waiting for your opportunities. And working hard in the meantime."

His dream role is one that doesn't exist yet: He talks of a half-forgotten tale about an ambitious hustler who flips assumptions about privilege and cultural birthright. Wait, isn't that "Hamilton," the musical he's already in?

Nope, Onaodowan wants to see a big Broadway musical of "White Men Can't Jump." Producers, consider yourselves notified.

Vicki Hyman may be reached at vhyman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @vickihy or like her on Facebook. Find NJ.com/Entertainment on Facebook, and check out TV Hangover, the podcast from Vicki Hyman and co-host Erin Medley on iTunes, Stitcher or listen here.

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