In every job to be done, finding element of fun
‘Hamilton’ creator Miranda pours creative energy into ‘Mary Poppins’
After making the world care passionately about Alexander Hamilton and then winning a Pulitzer Prize (and just about every other prize), you’d think Lin-Manuel Miranda would go on an extensive vacation. Instead, the “Hamilton” creator/star moved his whole life to London and spent six months making a blockbuster movie musical for Disney.
And not just any musical: “Mary Poppins Returns,” a sequel 54 years in the making that opens Wednesday, Dec. 19. It’s not Miranda’s first movie, but it’s his first leading role. He plays Jack, a lamplighter and friend to Mary Poppins, played by Emily Blunt. In the Poppins-verse, it’s only 24 years after the original movie, which lands the action square in the midst of the Great Depression.
Miranda, 38, insists he didn’t need a post-“Hamilton” vacation.
“Making this movie was a vacation,” he says on the phone during a busy press day in which he will ultimately do 30 interviews and shred his voice. “To get to play a role in someone else’s movie, to be part of the ‘Mary Poppins’ universe and work with the caliber of actors creative team on this film who are all at the top of their game — it really felt like a vacation from the grind of doing seven shows a week.”
Don’t get him wrong. The phenomenon of “Hamilton” was, as he puts it, “a joyous time, the fruition of seven years’ hard work.” But Miranda didn’t hesitate when it came time to chop off his long colonial locks,
pack up his wife, lawyer Vanessa Nadal, and toddler son Sebastian, and “join Mary Poppins on some adventures.”
A fan of the original Julie Andrews-Dick Van Dyke movie from watching it on VHS, but only as far as “Feed the Birds” though, because the song’s minor key made him cry, Miranda says the key to the new movie’s success is director/ choreographer Rob Marshall (“Chicago,” “Into the Woods”).
“They handed this job to the biggest ‘Mary Poppins’ fan in the world, and he put everything into this movie he wanted to see and hired people who already have Mary in their blood,” Miranda says.
Coming from the theater, Marshall insisted on nine weeks of rehearsal for his cast, which includes Angela Lansbury, Meryl Streep, Colin Firth, Ben Whishaw and Emily Mortimer.
“You can see from any of Rob’s movies that he gets the best out of people, so your only job is to give yourself over to that vision as completely as possible.”
In addition to publicizing “Poppins,” Miranda has been in the news a lot recently. There was the splashy “Poppins” premiere in Hollywood one day, followed by the unveiling of his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame the next. Choked up by the introductory speeches made by his heroes Rita Moreno and “Weird Al” Yankovic, Miranda hardly had time to dry his tears before flying to Washington, D.C., where he and his creative team for “Hamilton” — director Thomas Kail, musical director Alex Lacamoire, choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler — received Kennedy Center Honors (the ceremony will be televised on CBS Dec. 26).
“This is a very crazy week,” Miranda says. “What’s really crazy is that I have whole weeks where I do nothing but watch Netflix and play with my kids. That balance is what keeps me sane. But, yeah, it’s a hell of a week.”
Even in the slower times, Miranda still entertains his 2½ million loyal Twitter followers daily with nearly nonstop glimpses into his life, loves and creative process. Lately, in addition to all the “Mary” mania, Miranda has been sharing his attempts to relearn all his “Hamilton” lines before he returns to the lead role for three weeks in his parents’ native Puerto Rico as part of his ongoing efforts to shore up the country’s resources in the wake of Hurricane Maria.
Miranda jokes that he’s got nothing on the books after March, but he’ll have a hard time getting people to believe that. He recently completed filming in Wales for the first season of a TV series based on Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” books. Miranda’s first hit musical, “In the Heights,” is heading to the big screen with “Crazy Rich Asians” director Jon M. Chu, and Miranda himself plans to make his feature film directing debut with “Tick, Tick … Boom!” an autobiographical musical by the late “Rent” composer Jonathan Larson.
“When (producer) Julie Oh told me we had the film rights, I said, ‘You’re in luck! Your search for a director is over. Congratulations,’ ” Miranda says. “Jonathan’s story intertwines and rhymes with my own. I know what he went through as a young composer in New York struggling to get his work seen. There’s something so specific about the way he describes those struggles that applies to anyone trying to double down on their passion when the world is saying grow up and get a real job. What makes ‘Tick, Tick … Boom!’ even more moving for me than ‘Rent,’ which I love, is that it applies to anyone who’s tried to do what they love for a living. Everything has been preparing me for this.”
Until then, Miranda will be charming movie audiences as a lamplighter who once apprenticed to Burt, the jack-of-alltrades played by Van Dyke in the original “Poppins” movie. Van Dyke continues to catch smiling criticism for his wobbly Cockney accent, and Miranda, who attempts an East London accent in the film, knows he’s in for the same treatment.
“Dick has an incredible sense of humor about the way his accent has been received through the years,” Miranda says. “I knew if his accent was the most scrutinized accent in film, mine would be the second-most scrutinized.”
By the time Van Dyke joined Miranda on set to play the son of the aged banker he played (in a sneaky cameo) in the first movie, it was too late to get any accent tips. “I had already committed most of my performance to film by then,” Miranda says.
Van Dyke, 92, is a definite highlight of the movie, and Miranda couldn’t agree more.
“People want to know what it was like to work with Dick Van Dyke, and all you have to do is watch the movie and watch the way me and Emily are watching him,” Miranda says. “Our eyes are like saucers.”
The original Mary Poppins, Julie Andrews, declined to be part of the new movie so that Blunt could have her moment. But at some point, Andrews will cross paths with Miranda. She’ll give him a hug and whisper something in his ear. Imagining that moment, Miranda says, “I hope she whispers, ‘Practically perfect in every way.’ Then I can ascend to heaven.”