Merry the Men of mary poppins
Dick Van Dyke & Lin-Manuel Miranda bring the joy (and singing and dancing) in the movie return of Disney’s famous flying nanny.
During afternoon a gray last London year, Lin Manuel Miranda was in musical paradise: He was watching Dick Van Dyke, then 91, on the set of the new movie Mary
Poppins Returns, singing and hoofing with the energy of a man half his age.
“I was geeking out!” the Hamilton star says. As for Van Dyke? “Everyone on the set was surprised I could do it,” the iconic actor says. “And nobody was more surprised than I was!”
Fans of all ages will see this supercalifragilisticexpialidocious sight for themselves when Disney’s Mary
Poppins Returns, a sequel 54 years in the Dec. making, 19. Set arrives 25 years in after theaters the original, on the fantastical musical features the iconic British nanny (Emily Blunt, taking over for Julie Andrews) swooping down on a kite to once again care for now-grown siblings Jane and Michael Banks (Emily Mortimer and Ben Whishaw), along with Michael’s three kids. Tony- and Grammy-winning
Hamilton maestro Miranda, 38, plays Mary’s longtime friend Jack, a jolly streetlamp lighter. “Jane and Michael are convinced that all those adventures were things of their imagination,” Miranda says, noting that the story is based on author P.L. Travers’ later books in her Mary Poppins series. “Jack has never forgotten. He’s got a little bit of childlike wonder about him.”
Though Jack is fashioned as an apprentice of Van Dyke’s original chimney-sweeper character, Bert, the acting legend appears in the new film as the son of his other character from Mary Poppins—the ancient banker, Mr. Dawes.
“Oh, I never thought I’d revisit this movie,” says Van Dyke, who turns 93 on Dec. 13. “Being in the cast just thrilled me!”
The Disney Magic Is Alive & Well
Both of Mary Poppins Returns’ merry music men ooze enthusiasm during our phone interview. Miranda sends a hearty salutation from the U.K.—the Manhattan-
based actor and composer is overseas working on a BBC/HBO series, His Dark Materials— by declaring, “Greetings from rainy Wales!”Van Dyke’s booming, baritone voice blares throughout his Los Angeles home, where he’s wide awake and rarin’ to go at 7:30 a.m. Marvels Miranda, “He’s human caffeine! He has a sheer joy of living that inspires everyone to be better.”
Van Dyke’s gung-ho attitude hasn’t altered much since 1963, when Walt Disney himself offered him the role of Bert without a screen test. At the time, the West Plains, Mo., native was already a Tony winner for originating the role of Albert Peterson on Broadway in Bye Bye Birdie (a role he reprised in the film). He was also a couple seasons into his hit classic sitcom, The Dick Van Dyke Show. Mary Poppins was nominated for 13 Academy Awards and won five, and Van Dyke says that, to this day, children write him letters about his character, the lovable, singing, dancing chimney sweep Bert.
Van Dyke’s own successes span movies (1968’s Chitty Chitty Bang Bang), TV (1993–2000’s Diagnosis Murder) and the stage (the 1980 revival of The Music Man). Most recently, he appeared in two Night at the Museum comedies. He’s never stopped working, and has no intention of doing so. “I just love it,” he says. “Retirement is a very bad idea. If you’re doing something you like doing, why retire? It doesn’t make sense.” (He hasn’t ruled out a return to television either.) A Super Spelling Test Miranda has his own special set of Mary Poppins memories. He grew up in the Inwood section of New York City listening to show tunes, courtesy of his mother, Luz, a clinical psychologist, and his father, Luis, a political consultant. “Do you know that my dad’s favorite movie is The Unsinkable Molly Brown?!” he says with an incredulous laugh. “We couldn’t afford Broadway musicals, so I grew up surrounded by film musicals.” In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he says, he often sought out the Disney movies packaged in puffy white VHS boxes too big for the shelf. His go-to pick for the VCR: the musical about the wondrous singing nanny. “‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’ is every smart kid’s theme song because you’d run around on the playground and be like, ‘Can you spell it?’” he says. And on the playground of Hunter College Elementary School, “I met my best friend because he was the only kid I knew who could spell it backwards and forwards. It was a cool spelling litmus test!’”
In a twist of irony, Miranda admits that, as a kid, he never could make it through the entire movie because the “Feed the Birds” ballad in the closing act was too upsetting. According to Van Dyke, that was Disney’s favorite song and he insisted on including it in the film.
Miranda notes that he got his “big break” by being cast as Conrad Birdie in a sixth-grade production of Bye Bye Birdie—the same show that launched Van Dyke’s career. “After I got a taste of it, there was no going back,” he says. He’d go on to contribute the music and star in the Tony-winning musical In the Heights, cowrite the music and lyrics for Bring It On: The Musical and make small appearances in Modern Family and How I Met Your Mother. On his honeymoon with his wife, Vanessa Nadal, he
read a biography of revolutionary politician Alexander Hamilton and conceived of the idea of a hip-hop musical. Since its Broadway opening in 2015, Hamilton has become a cultural phenomenon.
One Wednesday afternoon in between Hamilton performances, Miranda agreed to a coffee with Poppins director Rob Marshall and his producing partner. “When they told me what they had in mind for me, I couldn’t believe it,” he says. “I was pretty much in from that day onward.”
His two days on set with Van Dyke provided the ultimate high point. “I wanted to know everything about his theater experience,” he says. “I asked him a lot of questions. I got what I could through osmosis.”
Van Dyke jokes that he’s still waiting on his Hamilton tickets.
Staying on Their Toes
So what keeps Van Dyke and Miranda quite literally on their toes? That mutual, unadulterated love of singing and dancing. Van Dyke regularly goes out dancing with his wife of nearly seven years, makeup artist Arlene Silver, 46 years his junior. (He has four children, Christian, Barry, Stacy and Carrie Beth, with his first wife, Margie Willett.) He sings in an a cappella quartet and a local six-piece jazz band that plays Dixieland and ragtime music. When he goes to the market every morning and hears music playing in the background, he starts dancing. “Oh, absolutely dancing keeps me young!” he exclaims. “I do a little dancing every day. Any kind of movement will help keep joints and bones moving.”
Miranda will begin production on a movie adaptation of In the Heights starting in the spring. He’s also helping collaborate on a live-action edition of The Little Mermaid. But he most eagerly awaits watching Mary Poppins Returns with his 4-year-old son, Sebastian. His other son, Francisco, was born in February just a few weeks after he and his wife saw a rough cut of the film. “When people ask me how’s the movie, I say, ‘It’s labor-inducingly good!’”
Why are musicals the essence of his life? “Musicals, on film or onstage—there is so much that needs to go right for a number to really lift off and give you goose bumps,” Miranda says. “It’s the hardest art form. And when it really works, there’s no more amazing feeling.”
“There’s an old saying,” Van Dyke adds. “To sing like nobody can hear you, dance like nobody can see you and love like you’ve never been hurt,” he says. “That’s a good way to live.”