After ‘Hamilton,’ Leslie Odom Jr. just wanted to be himself. Then the role of Sam Cooke came calling.

It’s almost Christmas, and nearly two weeks have handed since the actor and singer-songwriter appeared on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” after which DeGeneres examined constructive for the coronavirus. Odom has since been quarantining from his spouse, actress Nicolette Robinson, who’s pregnant with their second youngster. After a slew of destructive exams, Odom says this could be the final one. Facing the health-care employee, he straightens his again, takes a swab to the nostrils, scrunches his face and exhales.

By now, Odom is used to pandemic-induced deviations. This previous spring, his month-long live performance tour was nixed after two dates. He spent his summer season co-starring with Robinson in the Freeform miniseries “Love in the Time of Corona,” which they shot from their home. And “Hamilton” unexpectedly reclaimed the zeitgeist in July, when the coronavirus prompted Disney to ship a filmed manufacturing of the authentic Broadway solid — Odom included — straight to streaming, 15 months forward of a deliberate theatrical launch.

Odom, of course, relishes the shot of pleasure “Hamilton” introduced viewers throughout a dreary 2020. But from an expert perspective, he acknowledges the early drop was “disconcerting.”

“When ‘Hamilton’ is going to be released, you’re going to try to set up things around that,” says Odom, 39, who received a Tony and Grammy for taking part in Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton’s tragic foil. “Maybe I’m going to record a record, or maybe I’m going to get some meetings. This is maybe the biggest moment of my career, and I’m locked in the house — we’re all locked in the house.”

If Odom couldn’t capitalize on #Hamifilm mania the means he imagined, you wouldn’t comprehend it from his latest physique of work. For one, Odom did finally report an album — his second assortment of Christmas tunes, launched in November — and collaborated with Sia on a reimagining of his 2019 monitor “Cold.” He additionally earned his first Emmy nomination for his voice-over efficiency in “Central Park,” the earnest and eccentric Apple TV Plus animated sequence.

Now, Odom is orchestrating double Oscar buzz for “One Night in Miami,” during which he performs soul music savant Sam Cooke and performs the authentic music “Speak Now,” co-written by him and Sam Ashworth. The film, directed by Regina King and tailored by Kemp Powers from his 2013 play, imagines the discussions that went down Feb. 25, 1964, when Muhammad Ali (Eli Goree), then often called Cassius Clay, celebrated his heavyweight world championship by convening in a seedy lodge room with fellow Black icons Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir), Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge) and Cooke.

“[Odom] is such a special talent as far as singing, dancing, acting, theater, TV, film — he really can do it all,” Goree says. “You feel like you’re next to somebody that 30, 40 years from now, people are going to come up to you and say, ‘Wow, what was he like?’ ”

Actor Josh Gad was 18 when he met Odom at Carnegie Mellon University’s theater program. His classmate had prolonged dreadlocks, Gad recollects, and a heavenly voice — plus a sly sense of humor that surfaced when the duo had been required to assist with set development. (“It was just such delirium,” Gad says, “that two actors who had basically never used their hands for physical labor were suddenly working with saws and jackhammers.”)

After Odom graduated in 2003, the Philadelphia product launched into an inconsistent profession acting on Broadway (in “Rent” and the short-lived “Leap of Faith”) and the small display (in the NBC musical “Smash,” most notably). Successes proved fleeting, setbacks proved dispiriting and, earlier than his star-making flip in “Hamilton,” Odom thought of quitting present enterprise.

“There’s a depth in his acting and in his singing that speaks to a very full life with ups and downs,” says Gad, the co-creator of “Central Park.” “Any pain that he’s had in his life, he puts into his performance. Over the years, obviously he’s refined it. But you could even see as an 18-year-old that, God, this guy is special.”

In the wake of “Hamilton’s” transcendence, Odom steered his drive towards new lanes: music and movie. November 2019 introduced the launch of “Mr,” a fusion of traditional jazz and modern soul that marked Odom’s first album of authentic materials. On the massive display, he booked roles in “Murder on the Orient Express,” “Harriet” and the upcoming “Sopranos” prequel, “The Many Saints of Newark.”

When requested about auditioning for Cooke in “One Night in Miami,” although, Odom concedes he “ran from this project for an amount of time that embarrasses me today.” And Cooke wasn’t the solely musical mastermind he resisted — Odom backed off when approached about enjoying Sammy Davis Jr. on display, as nicely.

“I wanted to do all of the things that no one would have dared let me do before ‘Hamilton,’ ” Odom explains, noting Hollywood’s penchant for pigeonholing actors. “For the very first time, instead of being, you know, a wack Sammy Davis Jr., I had the opportunity to be a really exceptional Leslie Odom Jr. So as you can imagine, that was a valuable thing to me. I didn’t want to rush to put on somebody else’s very large, ill-fitting shoes.”

But Odom’s representatives pleaded with him to rethink “One Night in Miami.” Powers’s script lends a fly-on-the-wall enchantment to the fictionalized banter amongst Cooke, Clay, Brown and X, as their larger-than-life personas gasoline a crackling dialogue on religion and philosophy. At the movie’s core is an ideological sparring session between Cooke and X over how to finest use one’s platform to advance Black empowerment.

“My hesitation was being in, like, a Sam Cooke biopic, where it’s just essentially a trick, an impersonation,” Odom says. “But with this script, Kemp Powers wanted to use these men and their legacies, these archetypes of what they meant, what they stood for, and have a conversation.”

That dialog, Odom says, echoes the discussions that performed out backstage at “Hamilton” in 2015 and 2016, as the authentic solid and crew grieved the tragedies of Sandra Bland, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile — Black Americans whose deaths grew to become flash factors in the nation’s wrestle with systemic racism — and regarded their very own accountability to converse out.

“We were in a unique position where we can say something and people are listening,” says Odom, who devoted his ultimate “Hamilton” efficiency to Sterling and Castile, amongst different victims of violence. “What is our responsibility to say? There were disagreements [backstage], and there were fights. So that’s the conversation that Kemp wanted to have, and that’s daring. That’s what made me get over my fear and jump in with both feet.”

After a restricted theatrical launch, “One Night in Miami” begins streaming Friday on Amazon Prime. (Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.) Reflecting on the early days of manufacturing, final January in New Orleans, Odom recollects that he wasn’t but tuned to Cooke’s pitch. But his director had religion. “Regina saw something in me,” Odom says, “that I didn’t see in myself yet.”

He progressively discovered the character over the course of manufacturing, imbuing Cooke with cool charisma and simmering depth. To carry out Cooke’s songs, Odom immersed himself in archival recordings that helped him evoke the King of Soul’s clean tenor and stage presence.

“When I first heard the playback on set of ‘You Send Me,’ I didn’t know it was Leslie — I thought it was Sam,” Goree says. “I was like, ‘Man, I love this song.’ He’s like, ‘Yeah, I tried my best.’ And I said, ‘What are you talking about? No, that’s not you!’ He just sounded so much like Sam.”

“I knew that Leslie could handle the singing, but I wanted to hear the dialogue from him,” King provides over electronic mail. “We had two conversations before he came in and read. In those conversations, I heard his passion and how dedicated he would be to the process. He wanted to honor the legacy of Sam Cooke and was open to all things that would allow him to achieve that.”

Odom’s vocals carry “One Night in Miami” to its cathartic conclusion, as the movie ends with Cooke’s “Tonight Show” efficiency of the seminal protest music “A Change Is Gonna Come.” Odom filmed that scene Feb. 7 — his final day of principal images and, coincidentally, the 56th anniversary of that “Tonight Show” taping.

“[Cooke] was never closer to me than he was on that day,” Odom says. “Because ‘A Change Is Gonna Come,’ that is all of his training in the gospel church, all of his experience as a then-pop sensation and a matinee idol — it was him putting all of that together and saying the thing that only he could say. And that’s what I’m trying to do.”

Odom carried that metaphysical bond with Cooke into the composition of “Speak Now,” which performs over the movie’s finish credit. Dwelling on Cooke’s demise lower than a 12 months after the launch of “A Change Is Gonna Come,” Odom remarks that “he’s already singing to us from beyond the grave . . . leaving something for all time, for his children to know him better.”

Cooke’s mortality impressed the urgency expressed in “Speak Now,” which Odom recorded this previous summer season amid the Black Lives Matter motion’s resurgence. With his younger household’s future on his thoughts, Odom wanted to comply with in Cooke’s footsteps and produce an activist anthem for generations to come.

“I’m just trying to reach a moment like that,” Odom says, “when I can put together all these experiences from those dance classes when I’m 13, 14 years old in Philadelphia, and finding myself standing in the center of my wildest dream in ‘Rent’ on Broadway, and the television training, and everything that ‘Hamilton’ and Burr gave me, and these films — I’m trying to put it all together to say something that only I can say.”

Considering how the role of Cooke amounted to an uncanny confluence of Odom’s skills and traits — as a performer, songwriter, activist and father — he’s all the extra flummoxed that he hesitated to pursue the half. When Odom known as his representatives after manufacturing, he thanked them for pushing him towards the role and informed them that “One Night in Miami” was a “new beginning” for his profession.

Rule No. 1 for that restart: “From here on out, they all have to feel like this.”

“I’ve got to bring all of myself to this work,” Odom says. “Once you get to do that once, I don’t want to leave any of this at the door anymore.”