There’s something electric about New York City in the summer — and on a sweltering 100-degree day at the Tribeca Festival, that electricity had nothing to do with the heat. It was the energy of history coming to life on the big screen.

I was on the ground at the world premiere of Young Washington, the highly anticipated new film telling the origin story of America’s most mythic founding father — and it did not disappoint. With the country celebrating its 250th anniversary and the Tribeca Festival marking its own 25th, the timing couldn’t have been more perfect.

Here’s everything that happened.

A Celebration Within a Celebration

I kicked things off on the red carpet alongside Haron Freidman, and the energy was immediately festive. Two major milestones colliding in one place — the quarter-century of Tribeca and the 250th birthday of the United States — gave the whole evening a sense of occasion that went well beyond a typical film premiere. “Happy birthday, USA!” pretty much summed up the mood.

Inside the Film: A Hero’s Journey Nobody Knows

Before the film screened, I sat down with the creative force behind Young Washington to hear how this project came to be — and the origin story of the film is almost as compelling as the story it tells.

It starts, believe it or not, with a sold-out show. A decade ago, he was in New York, tried to get tickets to Hamilton, and couldn’t. So he did what any reasonable person does when denied access to a Broadway smash: he read 30 books. Starting with Ron Chernow’s Hamilton and Washington, he fell into a years-long obsession with the founding of America — not because he was planning a film, but because he simply couldn’t stop.

“The more I read the story of the founding of America, the more I thought — how is this country here at all?” he told me. “This should not have worked.”

What captivated him most was Washington himself — not the marble statue on the pedestal, but the young man underneath. A figure forged, as he put it, “in pain, risk, failure, and adventure.” An origin story hiding in plain sight that most Americans have never heard.

Patriotism, it turns out, runs deep in his family. His grandfather received the Congressional Medal of Honor in World War II — badly burned after throwing a phosphorus bomb from an aircraft — and instilled in him from a young age the idea that freedom isn’t free. “The man saying that statement had burns, his arm fused in place,” he recalled. That sense of awe and gratitude for what the founders risked never left him, and it’s woven into every frame of this film.

On Set with the Cast: Battle Scenes, Wigs, and 6 A.M. Wake-Up Calls

I also had the chance to speak with one of the film’s stars, who plays alongside William Franklin Miller as the young George Washington. He was effusive about Miller — calling him a brilliant talent — and clearly still riding the high of the whole experience.

His most memorable days on set? The battle sequences, without question. The Fort Necessity battle scene, he told me, was originally scheduled for three days of filming and stretched to four or five. Rain machines, period costumes that restricted movement, heavy muskets that sometimes misfired mid-take — it was, in his words, “brutal even filming.” But he’s proud of what made it to screen.

There was also a funnier side to life on a period film. After wrapping in Ireland, his body clock had been so conditioned to a 6 a.m. car call that he kept waking up at dawn for days afterward — still in the rhythm of the character, just without the wig. “Which actually was a blessing,” he laughed. The wigs, apparently, were quite the morning commitment.

Like everyone I spoke to, the world premiere was his first time seeing the finished film. The excitement — and nerves — were completely genuine.

Kelsey Grammer on Gratitude, George Washington, and the Salmagundi Sandwich

The highlight of the evening had to be sitting down with the legendary Kelsey Grammer, who plays Lord Fairfax in the film — the man who, as Kelsey describes it, “gives Washington the nod.”

“Lord Fairfax recognizes something in this young man that he maybe can’t quite put his finger on,” Kelsey told me. “Maybe it reminds him of himself a little bit. And he thinks — go find yourself. Go figure out what your history is supposed to be. Go make it.”

Kelsey hadn’t seen the finished film yet either, and his excitement was infectious. He’s particularly looking forward to the audience’s reaction to the now-famous story of Washington surviving bullets in battle — an episode so extraordinary that Kelsey put it simply: “God bounced a star off that guy’s head and said go make it happen.”

From there, Kelsey launched into a wonderful tangent about Washington’s New York — the church on Fifth Avenue near 13th Street where Washington used to pray, the architectural history you can trace just by walking the city, and a little-known historical delicacy called the Salmagundi sandwich (a shellfish-based dish popular among the founding fathers, which we do not eat anymore, but maybe should again). It was a masterclass in passionate storytelling from someone who clearly loves this country deeply.

When I asked what it meant to premiere this film on America’s 250th anniversary, he got quiet for a moment before answering. “It’s a pretty full circle thing for me,” he said. “I’ve spent my whole life doing my best to represent a sense of gratitude for what these people did. They were extraordinary people who fought with everything they had to bring about a government that had never existed on earth before. That’s pretty remarkable.”

It really, truly is.

Walking away from the Tribeca premiere of Young Washington, I was struck by how much this film arrives at exactly the right moment. In a summer when America is reflecting on 250 years of its own story, here is a film that goes back to the very beginning — not to the myth, but to the man. The risk-taker. The kid who hadn’t yet become the face on the dollar bill.

Stay tuned for more coverage, and as always — we’re living it up, right here.

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