Taken from the Winter issue of Wonderland. Order your copy of the issue now.

“How I got into acting was the wrong way,” beams Anthony Ramos almost as soon as our interview begins, a pretty surprising sentiment for a performer involved with some of this decade’s most talked-about film and theatre moments. Born and raised in Bushwick, New York, the actors’ career lightbulb moment came in his junior year of high school. After auditioning for a school musical he mistook for a talent show, a teacher grabbed him by the shoulders and told him point-blank that acting was his calling. This same teacher is actually driving the star to his sold-out show in Washington DC as we gab over the phone about what it was really like working with Lady Gaga in A Star Is Born (he loved it).

He likens the feeling of his first time on stage to the thrill of being on a baseball pitch, a sport beloved by his brother and father before him. “I was uncomfortable by how comfortable I felt,” he admits, “but in that moment it was amazing.” Ramos went on to attend the American Musical and Dramatic Academy on a full scholarship, studying performing arts in the late 00’s and landing roles in various regional musicals before snagging the break of a lifetime in 2014.

Chancing on an open call for Lin-Manuel Miranda’s award-winning production of Hamilton, in which he took not one but two starring roles, changed the direction of Ramos’ life forever. “I had no agent, no nothing,” he tells me. The opportunity came straight off the back of an off-Broadway show he was working on folding just a week before the curtain was supposed to drop, a strange twist of fate that cultivated a strong and fruitful relationship — and even mentorship — between the two.

This would also lead to another pivotal moment in Ramos’ career, to which he owes the existence of his emotive debut album The Good and the Bad, released earlier this year. He met his now best friend and executive producer Will Welles on the opening night of Hamilton, and after he left the production in 2016 the pair jetted off to LA for three months to craft his sound and work on telling his story. Inspired by a lifelong love of hip- hop and Nashville artist Ben Rector, the album is a soulfully immersive series of mini- stories exploring “all the moments in-between good and bad, it’s all about the journey.”

As for what the next decade has in store, Ramos is taking Lady Gaga’s advice to ‘cherish the small gigs’ (“I was like, word!”), and striving to pass the torch on to those who haven’t yet told their stories, “hopefully building a foundation where other artists have a place that is open and willing to listen.”