After Odom played Paul in Rent on Broadway (1998) when he was 17, he went on to Carnegie Mellon University. He was in the original ensemble of Dreamgirls (2001). Odom played lab technician Joseph Kayle in nine episodes of CSI: Miami (2003 and 2006), Freddy in Big Day (2006-7) and Sam Strickland in the musical TV show, Smash (2012-13). He won a Lead Actor in a Musical Tony award for his role of Aaron Burr on Broadway in Hamilton (2015-2016). That was Odom as Dr. Arbuthnot in Murder on the Orient Express (2017) and as the voice of park manager Owen Tillerman in the animated musical-comedy series, Central Park (2020-22). He received an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of singer Sam Cooke in One Night In Miami (2020) and played Black Panther Harold McBrayer in The Many Saints of Newark (2021). Odom was head scientist Lionel Toussaint in Glass Onion, the second Knives Out movie (2022) and Victor Fielding, a father with a possessed child, in The Exorcist: Believer (2023). He has a recurring role in Abbott Elementary (2022) as Draemond Winding, a former student who now runs a competing school. Purlie Victorious (2023) opened with Odom as the lead in September.