I’m keeping a promise to a younger version of me ...his head would have exploded at this movie
LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA, STEPHANIE BEATRIZ AND JOHN LEGUIZAMO TELL LAURA HARDING WHY DISNEY’S NEW FILM ENCANTO IS SUCH A LANDMARK FOR THE LATINO COMMUNITY
A TALE of family, love, responsibility and magic, the new film Encanto makes history as Walt Disney Animation Studios’ first-ever Latino movie.
The musical, featuring songs by Hamilton creator Lin-manuel Miranda (who also wrote the earworms in Moana) follows the Madrigals, a magical family who live in the mountains of Colombia in a charmed and special village.
Every child in the family is blessed with a unique gift except for Mirabel, who is voiced by Stephanie Beatriz, the 40-year-old actress best known for playing Detective Rosa Diaz in the hit sitcom Brooklyn Nine-nine.
Born in Argentina to a Colombian father and a Bolivian mother, before moving to the United States at the age of two, the idea of setting a movie in South America was too exciting for Stephanie to pass up.
“One of the most exciting things for me was that Disney was going to set its 60th animated film in Colombia – and not only that, but Lin-manuel Miranda was going to do the music for it,” she enthuses.
“I thought the combination of all of those things is going to be magical. Then on top of that, the centre of this world is this incredible family who are so special that they actually have magical powers.
And inside that family is this one character who doesn’t, Mirabel, and so the journey of the Disney heroine in this world is that she’s so very regular, and I think it’s extremely relatable to feel like you don’t stand out in a world of superstars.
“So I’m really thrilled for audiences, and especially young women to see this story come to life. I would have loved seeing something like this when I was a kid.”
The idea of a Disney film about a Latino family was also something that appealed to the child in 41-year-old Lin-manuel, who is of Puerto Rican descent.
The multi-talented actor, director and composer, who also wrote the musical In the Heights and has starred in movies like Mary Poppins Returns and His Dark Materials, describes it as an “enormous” step forward for representation in cinema. He adds that back when he was working on Moana he made his case to be involved in any film Disney made that would offer this kind of opportunity.
“I said ‘If you’re doing a Latinthemed anything for Disney Animation, please let me just be there’, because when I think of Disney Animation and Latino representation, it’s Cheech Martin as the Chihuahua in Oliver & Company – and I love that Chihuahua, he sounds like my uncle... but I wanted more.
“And so in a lot of ways, I’m keeping a promise to a younger version of me whose head would have exploded at this movie. That’s always the goal. Like all my projects, I’m just trying to put points on the board and create, with my fellow artists, that representation we felt was missing.”
It’s sometimes too overwhelming to think too hard about how this kind of representation impacts the children who will be the target audience for the movie.
“It’s both at the forefront of my mind and the thing I have to push out of my mind,” Lin-manuel admits. “It’s intimidating to write for Disney, you’re going on a playlist with Circle Of Life and Into The Unknown.
“So you have to, in one sense, put it out of your head, and just write to your character, the specificity of the world you’re trying to create. But also, at the back of your mind, it’s like, kids are going to be holding a hairbrush and singing this in a mirror if you do it right. So that’s a really fun responsibility.”
For John Leguizamo, widely known for playing Toulouse-lautrec in Moulin Rouge, Tybalt in Romeo + Juliet, and Luigi in the live action Super Mario Bros film, and who voices Mirabel’s brother Bruno, it’s a movie he never thought he would see in his lifetime.
“Even just this Zoom [interview] right here is special to me,” the Colombian-american actor says with emotion, “I was always the only Latinx person in the room, the Latinx person in the rehearsal, and to see all of us here, it’s so beautiful.
“The premiere was electric, it was historic, it was a historic moment. And I kept pinching myself going, ‘I can’t believe in my lifetime, we can be all Latinx and be all the heroes in the flicks’, which should have happened 30-40 years ago, but at least it’s happening before I shuffle off this mortal coil.”
He pauses then continues: “I mean, I’m glad that my life added up to something, that’s what it feels like.
Because I felt like it was such a hard time coming for us Latinx to have equal representation.
“The census just came out [in the US] and we are 20% of the population, but about 4% of the faces in front of the camera – and forget about behind the camera... the stories and the execs, it’s less than 1%.”
Just thinking about being part of a story that will give something to children that he never experienced is a bit too much, John says.
“They need to see themselves reflected back, so they understand that they matter, that they count, so they can project themselves successfully into the future,” he says passionately.
“Otherwise, they’re going to be like us, trying to construct the hero out of the pieces of people that kind of look like you or kind of have your culture.
“And then you have to keep always fluffing yourself, in a way, to keep going because you don’t see yourself represented and you’re so excluded. You have to force yourself into situations; you feel like you’re forcing yourself.
“I fought really hard to get here and to bring Latin representation because we were invisible...
“It’s shocking that we’re the largest [ethnic minority] population in America and we’re virtually invisible.
“It’s the craziest... You feel like you’re in a cultural apartheid sometimes. It’s just bizarre.”
They need to see themselves reflected back, so they understand that they matter... John Leguizamo on why films like Encanto are vital for Latino children
■ Encanto is in UK cinemas now.