Before Renée Elise Goldsberry took her career-defining turn as Wickie Roy in Girls5Eva (okay, we wish), she was part of the unique phenomenon of Hamilton. While originating the role of Angelica Schuyler on Broadway, the singer made regular behind-the-scenes vlogs from the within the eye of the hurricane (Hamilton pun intended). Those vlogs are the engine behind Satisfied, the new documentary directed by Chris Bolan and Melissa Haizlip which released its first trailer (below) on Thursday. After originally premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival last year, Satisfied will open in theaters on September 30.
Speaking with Harper’s Bazaar, Goldsberry acknowledged that a Hamilton documentary already exists, so she knew Satisfied needed to have something “new and valuable” to make it worthwhile. Rather than simply a behind-the-scenes look at a hit show, the documentary is about the actor juggling motherhood and fertility struggles with the long and arduous journey of bringing a cultural juggernaut to life. “Careers have their peaks and valleys, and motherhood has its peaks and valleys,” Haizlip explained to Variety. “I think combining that story together is so relatable, so universal. But then the specificity of Renée’s journey and the connection to Hamilton is so beautiful that being able to thread that together brings in this story in such a unique way.”
Goldsberry sees Satisfied as “a beautiful way to give back a season of my life that exists because of the burden that they bore during that time,” she told Harper’s Bazaar. “My husband [Alexis Johnson], I think, is the star of this film, because you see him quietly in the back making dinner or, most importantly, just supporting me and talking about how he protected me from having it seem like a burden. They didn’t want the burden of it to be evident to me. You see my children support me from home [with] these constant messages of ‘We’re proud of you, Mommy,’ and you just realize, ‘Oh, the reason why she was able to have both of these things is because it’s not in spite of them—it’s because of them.’ I love that they also are aware that while I was gone, I was always mindful of what I was missing.”
