Anthony Ramos Isn’t Asking for Permission
“Damn, what are you getting here, bro?” asks Anthony Ramos. He peers at me over his menu, baseball cap pulled low. We’re at the West Village’s Corner Bistro, a New York City institution that neither of us has been to before. I tell him that I’ve heard—no promises—that the burgers are good. “I’m going to get a Bistro Mini,” says Ramos, thirty-two. “That’s probably a mini burger, right?”
There’s plenty to talk about while we wait for the food, because the actor-singer-dancer has roughly a hundred things going on. You first met the Brooklyn-raised Ramos in the original cast of Hamilton, where he starred as both John Laurens and Philip Hamilton. (Ramos on the inevitable Hamilton movie musical: “By the time they do that shit, I’ll be too old.… We immortalized those roles. I don’t feel no type of way about seeing somebody else do it in the movie.”)
When Ramos left Hamilton in 2016, he quickly showed that he, quite simply, can do everything. He’s the rare young actor who can pull off franchise fare with just as much authenticity as his passion projects. The highlight reel includes leading roles in Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, In the Heights, and, this summer, Twisters. “Whenever people think of me, I want them to say, ‘That motherfucker squeezed the industry. He played every kind of role you could possibly think of,’” Ramos says.
In Twisters, Ramos plays Javi, a storm chaser who has history with Daisy Edgar-Jones’s Kate (sorry, it’s the traumatic kind), a military background, and too many one-liners to count. When Ramos and I meet, it’s still a couple weeks before the premiere of the natural-disaster flick. I’m not sure what spoilers to ask for, so I just ask him for the best line in the movie. His answer comes immediately. “We got twins! Twins!” he bellows, imitating costar Brandon Perea’s meme-worthy moment from the film’s trailer and laughing. A few weeks later, I’ll learn that Ramos lied. He has the best six words in Twisters, which he delivers in a sort of stunned dryness: “I think I killed some chickens.” Ramos is the movie’s comic relief—but, always one to max out his time onscreen, he’s also the beating heart. Look no further than Javi’s hero moment in act 3 or his lovelorn glances at Kate.
Ramos is shining in his current one-blockbuster-a-year clip. But his ascent wasn’t easy—and at one point even looked like it was in peril. His leading-man breakout was supposed to come in 2021’s In the Heights, the film adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s first Broadway hit and the movie that was supposed to save movies following the Covid-19 pandemic, which decimated theaters and release plans. In the Heights was critically praised, but audiences didn’t come. The scale of its commercial failure became the story.
It wasn’t the only film with such pressure on it at the time. Spielberg’s West Side Story also floundered, for example, inspiring its own batch of stories regarding the death of the box office. I ask Ramos if the expectations put on In the Heights were unfair. “No, whatever movie was going to come out [would’ve fared the same],” he says. “Because all the studios were trying to save the movies. They were like, ‘Let’s hold this, let’s hold this, and then we’ll put this out.’”
Relief wouldn’t come for two more years. “Bro, when Barbie and Oppenheimer came out, that’s when shit was like, Oh yeah, we back,” says Ramos, underselling his 2023 hit, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, which grossed $439 million at the global box office.
Next up, Ramos appears to be in line to star in a G.I. Joe and Transformers crossover, though his involvement is not yet confirmed. “I don’t know what their plan is for that,” he says. “I know that they’re working on the scripts and they’re developing the story right now.” In case you were wondering, Ramos says there absolutely is a secret to acting alongside Optimus Prime—or rather the digital Optimus added in postproduction. “Don’t get mad, because he is not there!”
Take a wild guess as to what else he’s up to. Marvel. In 2025, Ramos will star as the villain on Ironheart, a Disney+ series about the quasi successor to Iron Man. “I’ll show you some shit,” Ramos quips, pulling up his phone and showing me so many pics of his character (known as “the Hood”) that I’m nearly certain that Marvel chief Kevin Feige will detonate the Corner Bistro on the spot. What I can say is that Ramos’s character is heavily tattooed, so much so that it wouldn’t surprise me if the man set a Marvel world record for time in a makeup chair. “He’s from Humboldt Park, which is like a little Puerto Rico in Chicago,” says Ramos, who is of Puerto Rican descent himself. “I love this shit.”
Ramos doesn’t plan to be defined by blockbusters alone, however. Did we mention that he’s a Billboard-charting artist? He says that down the line he’ll be releasing new music and that he’ll “probably” also tour. Oh, and he’s writing a musical about the Nativity story.
Hold up: The burger’s here. Ramos hunches over, eats about a third of his Bistro Mini in one bite, and flashes an ear-to-ear smile. “Damn, this burger’s fucking good.” In fact, it’s so fucking good that the burger becomes the most pressing conversation subject for the rest of our time together.
But I do have one last nagging question. If you aren’t aware, many of the Broadway shows compete against one another in a summer softball league in Manhattan. Was Hamilton any good? “We was busting ass. Our doorman Angelo was a beast. He used to hit bombs. Ephraim Sykes was good,” Ramos says. His voice speeds up, as if the question punted him back to the Central Park diamonds, where they played. “Yo, you know who was the fucking competition? Matilda. A show with a bunch of kids. But none of the kids played. It was all stagehands.”
Okay, so … who won the league that year? Ramos looks at me as if I crossed a line. “Matilda.
Photographed by Mark Seliger
Styled by Chloe Hartstein
Hair by Kevin Ryan using GO247 & UNITE
Grooming by Jessica Ortiz for La Mer
Makeup by Rebecca Restrepo using Lisa Eldridge Beauty
Production by Madi Overstreet and Ruth Levy
Set Design by Michael Sturgeon
Nails by Eri Handa using Dior
Tailoring by Yana Galbshtein
Design Director Rockwell Harwood
Contributing Visual Director James Morris
Executive Producer, Video Dorenna Newton
Executive Director, Entertainment Randi Peck
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