Renee Elise Goldsberry is a Broadway icon whom audiences know and love most notably as Angelia Schuyler in Hamilton. Yet her career and her life are so much more than one Tony Award-winning role. In Satisfied, directors Melissa Haizlip and Chris Bolan join with Goldsberry to tell her story through the framework of Hamilton. The film is a profound look at not only an actor’s most beloved performance, but everything that has made her one of the stage’s most beloved actors.

Bolan and Haizlip joined TVBrittanyF.com ahead of Satisfied‘s theatrical release to talk about the years-long process of making the movie. They spoke about bringing the full breadth of Renee Elise Goldsberry’s life, and her very personal journey as a mother, to a wider audience. Plus, what was it like for them to work alongside some incredible Broadway stars during production?

Brittany Frederick: How did you two first become aware of Renee’s story, and what interested you in collaborating with her on Satisfied?

Chris Bolan: it was the summer of 2020, and Hamilton was supposed to have a big, big theatrical release, and they couldn’t, because of COVID… Renee moved out of the city and was good friends with a dear friend of mine, Kelli O’Hara—who’s also an amazing Broadway performer, Tony Award-winning actress and EP [executive producer] on our film. And Renee was kind of telling Kelli that she had all this behind the scenes footage of Hamilton and all this stuff, and she wished she had done something with it, because she was just going to dump it all on Instagram. She wished she had done a documentary or met somebody who who knew how to make documentaries. And Kelli said well, it just so happens that I have a good friend who just lives right over here who is a documentary filmmaker. Do you want to meet him? And she said, sure.

So I came out in my robe and my big COVID beard and met Renee Elise Goldsberry, and we started talking, and we hit it off right off the bat. And what struck me initially was that I just said, I like to tell stories that are very honest and vulnerable. And she said, that’s what I want too. I don’t want to just do a puff piece on me. We started moving forward, and I was introduced to Melissa, and I loved Melissa’s background. We both come from the theater, and I loved her last film. Melissa seemed like a good fit for the team, and we all moved forward in earnest.

Melissa Haizlip: When I heard there was going to be a documentary about Renee, I was just so excited, and I was so happy to be invited to join the team. I’m a huge musical theater fan. I’m a musical theater kid. I also grew up doing plays and musicals, and then I had a really long career on Broadway as a performer myself in many shows. Now I’m producing shows on Broadway [and] I love making documentaries as well. And so the idea of bringing all these things together… and as a Black woman in theater, I was so excited to see her story being told this way.

The themes of our film—motherhood, balancing career and family—are just so universal, so but the specificity of Renee and seeing the film through her eyes, that’s what really made a lot of difference for me. And her experience in Hamilton is unmatched. I’m just super happy to be a part of this team and to tell the story. It’s just so magical, and I’m happy that it’s the tenth anniversary of Hamilton as well, so we can reinvigorate the conversation and add something new to it with this film.

Hamilton provides the framework for the movie, and it will likely be a lot of viewers’ point of entry into knowing Renee, but it’s just one part of her impressive career. How did you balance telling the Hamilton story with providing a complete picture?

Bolan: It’s so hard because you’re right. You need to make a doc these days that’s about an hour twenty; people’s attention span doesn’t go beyond that. And so the two traps that you have is the shiny object, Hamilton, it all becomes that. Trap number two is to try to fit everything of her entire career into that hour twenty. And that’s not going to happen. You’re going to get so far into the weeds that you’re going to have a muddy story. So we really focused on her fertility journey, her journey as a mother, the adoption part of her story. And thankfully, it just happened to line up around the tentpoles of Hamilton.

We’re able to use Hamilton as the backdrop, and then tell a deeper story of motherhood, her adoption story with her daughter, her fertility journey with her son. And then trying to add in The Color Purple where it makes sense, trying to add in Rent where it makes sense. Everything that is in the film had to earn its way into the film, and had to make sense according to that journey that she was on. But there’s so much on the cutting room floor that we wish we could have used, that we just unfortunately had to let go of.

Haizlip: We wanted to make sure to prioritize what Renee prioritizes, and what truly matters in her life, since this is a film about her. And so we were always looking through that lens and checking in with her and making sure we were telling the story that she wanted to tell. Hamilton is like the Trojan horse; we know it’s going to happen, and we know she wins the Tony and everything. But what we don’t know is this journey of hers that’s very personal and truly inspiring.

And so we always say it’s an embarrassment of riches, when you think about the extraordinary amount of material that we ha. Not just the archives from her personal life and the adorable kiddie videos and all the behind the scenes photos and vlogs and everything, but also the story of Hamilton and what’s happening in those years when it’s being born. So it’s the creation of a phenomenon, but also the creation of a family, and syncing those two storylines together.

Are there particular parts of Satisfied that you want the audience to look out for, or that surprised you in the making of the movie?

Bolan: I obviously love the personal vulnerability, honesty, [the] moments where she sheds light on what’s going on behind this glitzy thing of Hamilton. Hearing stories of the spotlight in her face when she’s on stage, singing “Satisfied” and feeling like she’s out of control and that she doesn’t know what’s going to come out of her mouth. Meanwhile, Beyonce’s sitting in the front row, or Prince or or President Barack Obama. That, for me, was like holy crap, because you see this woman who looks invincible up there. I mean, she won the Tony. She’s incredible.

But underneath, there’s this tempest going on inside of her. And so there’s a section of the film where we try to show that tempest, that storm that is just whirling around her, because Hamilton became something that no one imagined it would become. It was this out of control, amazing thing. But in its wake, there’s a cost to it. For me, that was really interesting and fascinating, and I was happy to dig in and explore that.

Haizlip: Piggybacking off of the tempest—what’s crazy is it took four years or more to actually shoot this film, and then Renee ends up getting a role in The Tempest in Shakespeare in the Park. And we are so happy that we could film a certain portion of that too, because that was a really big role for her. Playing Prospero isn’t usually a role for a woman. So that was a huge boon for her, but also her children got to be in the show with her, and so we got to have a full circle moment.

There’s always been a separation between her work and her family. And finally, she gets to have it all at the same time. We never anticipated that coming. We didn’t even know she was going to take that role. So we were happy that we could show that and show what it means to be satisfied. You can’t always have it all, but here’s a moment that satisfies both of those things.

Bolan: One more little thing that was fascinating. She was so mischievous as a little girl, in the cutest way. It was really fun to kind of hear those stories. I wish we could have put more of it into the film. We couldn’t. It can only fit so much.

Chris, you mentioned Kelli O’Hara, who is an executive producer on Satisfied along with Renee and Audra McDonald. How much did they bring to the production, when you have producers who are living the story you’re working to tell?

Bolan: I can just talk about Kelli O’Hara because she’s my son’s godmother and my dear friend and extremely talented. We had a lot of conversations, even before I met Renee and before Melissa—we wanted to tell a story about women. Kelli tells stories about having to be in D.C. singing for the President or Kennedy Center or something. And there are stories of having to pump for your new baby at the White House, things that you’re just not told.

Kelli and Audra—mothers, these incredible Broadway divas, the stories that they were telling, and then the support that they gave Renee to encourage her to be the person that we’re going to share this larger story with, that was so great. And just having the support from them and the guidance throughout and their eyes on it. Kelli would watch cuts, and has been incredibly supportive, as has Audra. We have these amazing executive producers, and it was such a incredible gift.

Haizlip: We actually shot this incredible interview with Kelli and Renee and Audra that I think we could release as separate content on its own. It didn’t actually make it into the film, just for various reasons, being economic with our storytelling and editing and everything. But it is such an amazing thing to have these three divas—they don’t call themselves that, but we know that they are—talking about the challenges of motherhood and work and eight shows a week, and singing and being perfect, and all the things that this film represents. And also being a mother and being pregnant, or trying to get pregnant and have a life where you can fulfill your desire to be a mother in that motherhood journey.

As many people know, Audra McDonald was starring in an incredible show that I saw called Shuffle Along… and then she got pregnant during the show, and they had to make a decision. They actually decided to close the show, and that was really controversial. And it still is controversial to this day, because why should you have to close the show because the star becomes pregnant? You shouldn’t be penalized for that. And that was a theme we thought about throughout as we’re making this film.

Renee is grappling with a real question [of] what will happen if she chooses motherhood over her career, and and many women have had to do that, or they’ve had to postpone getting pregnant, or postpone having children, or make a decision to not have children in favor of having a great career. So these are real conversations that we’ve had, and we’re so proud to have such an incredible support team on the executive producer side—people who understand it and who’ve lived that truth.

Satisfied will be in theaters September 30 to October 2, 2025. Tickets are on sale now through Fathom Events. Photo Credit: Courtesy of AURA Entertainment.

Article content is (c)2020-2025 Brittany Frederick and may not be excerpted or reproduced without express written permission by the author. Follow me on Twitter at @BFTVTwtr and on Instagram at @BFTVGram. For story pitches, contact me at tvbrittanyf@yahoo.com.