Lin-Manuel Miranda...
and Puerto Rico are like distant cousins and we were sort of both colonized by the Spanish a long time ago and we have a lot of words in common and a lot of culture in common. One of the amazing things about seeing ‘In The Heights’ there was the Spanish I used in the score, is also Tagalog, similar words, Carnivale, all the Spanish titles translated perfectly to Tagalog. So that was a real joy.”
Lin-Manuel, who has won an Emmy, Grammy, Tony, Pulitzer Prize and MacArthur Fellowship, talked to us recently of his latest film feature, the musical fantasy helmed by Rob Marshall, “Mary Poppins Returns,” with Emily Blunt portraying the title role. Taking on an iconic role as Jack, the lamplighter and former apprentice of Bert (portrayed by Dick Van Dyke) from the original film, Lin-Manuel talked of his role and how he approached it.
Asked how he made it his own “Mary Poppins,” Lin-Manuel explained, “Well I think the smartest thing Disney did was hire the most zealous, protective fan in Rob Marshall to direct this movie. He loves the original film, he loves the first film and so he was not interested in remaking that, but said what do I, as the number one fan of ‘Mary Poppins’ want to see in the continuation of these stories, because there are lots of P.L. Travers books and lots of ‘Mary Poppins’ adventures that have yet to be committed to the screen.
“This is an original musical, these are all new songs and as someone who has written an original musical or two, I can tell you, the opening number is the one you spend the most time rewriting, because it teaches you how to watch the rest of the movie, you are setting the audience’s tempo. And so they wrote ‘Underneath A Lovely London Sky’ and we loved it, and we did lots of different versions and then we came back to ‘Underneath A Lovely London Sky’ with what we had learned from all the different iterations. And that’s how it’s supposed to go, that was certainly my experience writing in ‘In The Heights’ and I felt in such great hands with Mark Shaiman and Scott Wittman. Every song feels like a tailored suit to our talents and our abilities, for me and Emily and Ben Whishaw and all the way down the line. And so that’s the joy of being a performer in a new musical, is that it’s made to fit.”
He explained why he took on the role and the two months of rehearsal with director Rob Marshall.
“One of the joys of this is that Rob Marshall comes from the theater,” he said. “Before he was making the best movie musicals around, he was directing and choreographing ‘Damn Yankees’ for Broadway, ‘Kiss Of The Spider Woman,’ he has an incredible Broadway career. And he takes the best of what we know in theater and applies that to film. So we
had nine weeks of rehearsal, Broadway shows don’t get nine weeks of rehearsal. And in doing that, we all form a company and we are all making the same movie, whether if you are in it for one scene or you are Mary Poppins. And so that level of rigor and training were such great training wheels for me. This is my first big motion picture on this scale
and movies don’t get much bigger than this if your name isn’t Thanos. So it was absolutely essential and I am here because of Rob Marshall. This is my film school and I am going to be directing my first musical in a year, and I cannot have asked for a better film school than watching a master of his craft at work every day.”