Lin-Manuel Miranda

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Quest Love Supreme is a production of I Heart Radio.
Wait a minute, why does and bill at the same
interior blue and white? Oh my gosh, are y'all the
same person? Um? Our guest today, ladies and gentlemen. Uh
oh actually wait, let me let you know where you are.
My name is Quest Love and this is another episode

(00:21):
of Quest Love Supreme. We're here with Teams Supreme. Uh
ship your Steve. Hello there, yo, how are you great? Fantigolo?
What up? What up? And uh? We have Yah still here? Yes, yes,
and we have unpaid bill new bill bills, bills bills, Yeah,

(00:44):
bill two point out. I'll say that our guests absolutely well.
I always say that our guests needs no introduction, but
a guest. Our guest doesn't introduction because he's literally done
everything except for balance the budget. Um save us from COVID.
He's worn a Pulitzer, a h McArthur Genius grant, a

(01:07):
Kennedy Center honor. I thought you had to be like
at least three years old to get a Kennedy Center.
I didn't realize that one could be nineteen and win
a Kennedy Center honor. Uh. He's one a lot of Grammys. Uh.
He has an Emmy, and he might have a tony

(01:28):
or two I don't know, be it forty dollars on
StubHub or on Disney Plus. You literally have zero excuse
if you're not seeing our guests. His creation, Uh, one
of the biggest global phenomenons in entertainment, probably short of thriller.
See this is what happens when I don't what happens

(01:52):
when I don't have three by five cards. No, literally,
ladies and gentlemen, Uh, please welcome to quest Left Supreme,
the creator of In the Heights of Hamilton's. Let's not
forget Fossey Vernon actor, play right MC producer? What else
are you? Your director, your father, your son, caller? Thrilled

(02:12):
to be here? Washington Heights own litt Manuel Miranda. Alright,
so check it all right? You know, like if I
really know guess, I won't prep notes. I'll just go
off the top. However, I'm googling you, and I'm the questions,
the questions surrounding your name. This is this is hilarious

(02:37):
to me because under your name comes these following questions.
Did Burgh regret killing Hamilton's? Why do people like Hamilton's
so much? Why is Hamilton's so expensive? How old you
wouldn't be to go see Hamilton's. What's the most famous
Broadway show? What is Will Smith's net worth? I don't

(02:57):
know where that came from, but yeah, that came out
of nowhere. I asked that every day. Who's limit? Well's
Miranda's best friend? Who is the highest note in into
the unknown? And who is a mortal technique? So basically
you have oh wow, that runs again? It pretty good? Yeah? Yeah,

(03:20):
you literally run the whole spectrum of hip hop and
and uh in in history and one in ten questions,
one fell swoop. I wish it was that for for me.
This this is taking a long time. Do you do
you remember your the pilot episode Bill, Yes, that you
came to and you just castle fl you know, we

(03:43):
get him, no problem, And it's like four and a
half years later. Everyone's got a busier schedule than me.
It's you and getting those to line up is like
the death star window of just like, okay, these forty
five minutes, here we go. Dude, I know, trust me,
I know I do not take for granting. I remember

(04:05):
ask you had a spirit hour to even talk to us.
I wait a minute, but it's funny. I remember you
had agreed to dj I think our opening night party,
and I saw you a few days before and he said, hey,
thanks again for for doing that. And You're like, what
are you talking about? And I said, you're djaying the

(04:26):
opening night party and he went me, show you something
about my life, and you showed me your schedule and
you like literally opened your phone and it was more
colors than the rainbow in terms of like hour to
hour what you were doing. And Hamilton's hadn't really happened yet.
Hamilton's hadn't opened yet, and I was like, how can

(04:47):
one person, be one human do this much? And it
was like a glimpse of It was a glimpse of
my future. I was like, no, you're gonna be busy.
Um that you show for him that Grace Harry who
insists it if we have a future, you're gonna drop
ten jobs. Thank you, Grace. Wait, speaking of which, uh

(05:13):
Lynn and built do you know do you truly know
that my involvement with this was an accident to show
you how a loof I am about my schedule you're
involved with what do you know? How aloof? And how
like Mr McGoo accidental tourist. It was all right, let

(05:36):
me let me walk you through it real quick. You
you meant to go see a show at Joe's Pub
and you wandered into our show? Is that what you're
telling me? Basically? Yes, No, I'm serious, Um, John, when
John Ridley had one for twelve Years of Slave, you
know John Ridley and uh had have wrote twelve Years

(05:59):
of Slave and uh what's his name famously directed it,
Stephen Queen Quen. Right, So when Ridley had written Twelve
Years of Slave and about maybe six months after he
won his oscar, he had a meeting with us about
working on a project. So, in true mere fashion, arriving

(06:24):
and Steve Can attested this, I came like to the
meeting six minutes late, okay, really sixteen minutes late. And
what I didn't realize was that he was giving us
homework two to do. And part of that homework was
look research uh these plays that I think that are

(06:45):
cutting edge and you know, like going to change the shift.
And he had five plays that he wanted us to
see and homework number one was seeing an unknown Hamilton's
at the public either So me not me not putting
two two together I didn't realize because when you started

(07:05):
talking to me backstage, you had already gone into pitch
mode about joining being down, and in my head, I'm like, yeah,
I talked to John earlier. I'm yeah, I'm down. I
didn't realize that at that point, I talked myself into
a second production and it became a who's on first

(07:26):
situation for about two weeks with the Roots organization until
Showan and Tarik were like, noamre, what we're doing with
John Ridley is something different. Hamilton's a whole another animal.
I've never met John Riddley in my life. Now I
know that, But literally the whole time backstage, I was

(07:50):
just like saying yes to everything and not just literally
having zero clue that you guys weren't associated with Ridley.
I thought Ridley was just ending us there as a
part of this project he was with, and it wasn't
until later I obviously knew nothing about that since I've
never met that man. Sorry to this man, um, but

(08:13):
sorry this man, um the but I um. For me,
you coming to the show was like waiting for Guffman.
It was like less Love was finally coming to the show. Um.
You have been manifesting the roots coming to our show.

(08:34):
While I was writing the show, one was about the roots.
The one was both deaf, like most Deaf's gonna be here,
Like it's most de gonna be in the show. That
was always like the biggest That's what I'm saying. The
way you were talking was so like, like no, it was.
It was just so exciting and in my head, I'm like,

(08:55):
you guys had me out a little like already, you know,
like people already talked to me at nine am yesterday
morning like I'm I'm aboard, Like I didn't realize. That's
also why it's like Guffman, because you know in the
movie that guy's not Guffman who shows up and they're
like because we're like Quest loves in, but he thinks

(09:18):
he has said yes to a totally different thing that
I know nothing about it. Yeah, man, I just musical
theater loves. What do you um? Like? Now? What are you?
What's your what's your daily routine? Are you still able

(09:39):
to stay creative despite what we're in or you also
having a just stop moment? And I had I had
like a solid month and a half two months where
I didn't I didn't do any I didn't do anything.
I was about to start directing my first movie. We'd

(10:02):
shot eight days of footage when Netflix, I'm directing a
musical for Netflix and they shut us down, which was, um,
both a bummer and a huge relief because we were
already social distancing on set. We were already asking ourselves
hard questions of like how do you do a musical?
Were you singing to each other and not spit on

(10:22):
each other? Um? And so when Netflix said we're shoving
me on everything, it was like, good, someone higher up
than me has has answered it for us. Um. But
you know, the momentum, the momentum that goes into making
a movie, it's your whole life. You spend every waking
hour and like it's go time. And then that just stopped.
So when did they shut you down? How far are

(10:43):
we all around? What time was this? This was? It's
like the day March nine, mark this March eighth, and
I we were doing a night shoot, so we they
shut us down, and they told us this is gonna
be your last night filming at nine pm and we
still had like three shots left to go. So for
a while it was just me and the producers and

(11:04):
like our happy crew and actors with jobs and like
at that moment, like you know where you can't tell
anyone yet and we you know, we waited until the
end of the night to tell everyone. Luckily it was
before weekend, so everyone was going home for the weekend anyway. Um,
and then you know, a lot of it was just
the new what's the new normal? Like, what's the procedure
to leave the house? What is school? We'd already stopped

(11:28):
sending my kid to school, just on our own gut
ship Like just like the same thing too, I stopped
sending my kid. I think like a couple of days
before they finally called it. It was like even looked
like a week or something before they finally it was.
It was too and so you know it that first
month was just what do we do? I'm so grateful
my wife was so ahead of it. My wife was

(11:49):
a scientist, so like in January, she was like, this
is coming here and we have to take it seriously.
I'm in pre production on a movie. Like, I agree
with you, but I also can't stop doing what I'm doing. Um,
it's not my money and your mind. Did you think
that this is just going to be like maybe a

(12:10):
six week thing, maybe a two month thing. I content
May June when my wife explained the signs of it
to me, of like, this two week break is bullshit
because it doesn't even show up in people, and that's
why it's spreading so fast, Like healthy people spread this
and then find out they're sick after they've already exposed

(12:32):
however many people they've been in contact with, and so
like she was like, there's not gonna be two weeks.
She just saw she saw the whole thing. Earlady wife.
For those who don't know, is um the most beautiful
person ever to attend m I t oh, well, okay,
so the crew too? Was that me? That's that's like

(12:55):
you just made it weird by saying that, like you no, no, no, no,
we see in the college squad? Was she in the
no because we didn't go to my but no, I
can't imagine myself. I say that is a YouTube series
that we need animatics immediately, please, But Lynn, did she

(13:20):
get some insight to as as well as because now
that we're in it and that was her insight before,
I'm sure she got some things to tell you now
as you are approaching production and a thing. Yeah, absolutely,
I mean she you know, we are we we start
filming again in a week, and um, it's it is.
We're doing everything we can to be safe, and we've

(13:40):
learned from the movies that have already gone into production.
The production. Yeah, the actors are in their own bubble
and in their own quarantine. Um there's the red zone
and the yellow zone in the green zone. I basically
see my kids on the weekend. They get tested before
they can see me again. Um, Like I can't even

(14:01):
break that for for just hanging up with my kids.
Like we were taking it as seriously as possible because
it's it is. It's life and death. We you know,
um as we we all know, um and so so yeah.
But but but my wife saw it early and so
by the time I kind of they shut down production
on the movie and I looked up, Vanessa was like, well,

(14:23):
here's everything that's going on. But she had already kind
of figured out how to get in and out of
the house, like all of the stuff that is normal
to us now, and we were still learning. She was
she was on top of that. So I'm grateful to
her for that. So anyway, a month and a half
of nothing, and then I basically pivoted to the writing
projects that I wasn't going to be touching for a

(14:43):
year because I was working on this movie. Um, I'm
writing two scores for two different animated movies, one for
Disney and one for Sony Animation. Uh. And so I've
basically just that's been keeping me busy. Um during the pandemic,
it is just like all right, like go back to writing,
back to your keyboard. Uh wait, it just hit me.

(15:05):
I really want to start from the very beginning. I
want to start with Lynn. He tells three things about
unpaid feel that you don't know. Yes, it's really the
unpaid Bill episode. We're just using. Absolutely I knew that's

(15:26):
how I'd end up here, and I'm happy to be
of service. First of all, my entire career and Bill's
entire career is as the result of UH an accident,
UH and and an infidelity. Do not tell that story
goes names year we use names, we won't. We want stories.

(15:48):
Episode not mine, episode Bill. We had mine and it
was tragically great. So so UM my college girlfriend produced
UH musical at the School Theater at Wesleyan and she

(16:08):
produced once on This Island and it had a music
director and Bill was the sax player in the pit. Um. However,
the music director was dating the director of the show
and he cheated on her. She walked in on him cheating,
and I mean, this is college theater, guys, and she

(16:29):
was like, you're fired guy playing saxophone. You're the music
director now. And so Bill chased the music director of
this and then like proceeded to kill it. Like I
remember going to see the show being like, why does
this college show sounds so good? Um? And was just
like amazed at how professional and great the band sounded

(16:51):
and so uh and they were like, that's Bill Sherman.
He became the band conductor after we fired from sucking
around um. And so I then re hired to play
the bass because we didn't have a bass player there was,
so I in fact re hired and he was in
the band. Yeah. So wait, awkward, Bill, you pay the saxophone.

(17:16):
So yeah, you guys know this. We did not know this.
My Bill player and Bill had an African highlife band
in college called an African High Life. So you white
fail on Bill, like this you have selective remembering. So

(17:47):
like I majored in West African music? Do you play
that deep into it? For us? So I played the
saxophone and I was I was really bigging to fail out.
But I was something like you just took a trip
to Africa like a vacation. Oh you guys are talking
to new name the word. Oh my god, oh man.

(18:20):
If I had known you were going to go this deep,
I would have brought cuts. I really would like to
hear some. If you're West African music, Bill Professor Mion
was a dope band. It was like fifteen white guys
playing you couldn't find no black people. No. See, here's
the thing if you really want to get into it.

(18:40):
So where's the guys want to played West African music
like it's fair? But also Wesleyan world music is I
mean the guys with dreadlocks okay, my boy. Uh. What
was interesting about Wesleyan is that it was billed as

(19:03):
uh like diversity university as it were, but uh, it
was so segregated that it was after so like Lynn
lived in Latin guy House, which is called yeah, and
then and then all of the black folk lived in
Malcolm X House. Like I'm not even I'm not even
making this up. All the time in the house party

(19:27):
Uh Boy from the movie PCU was based on wesley
and the writers of that movie went to West like
every nationality and affinity group had its house. I was
part of the White Boys Stoner World music group. Yeah yeah,
and I lived in Las Yeah, and men was like

(19:48):
the Latin guy. Guess what he continued, this is this
is this the Santi gold angela Ye era of Wesleyan.
But or afterwards between us, MGMT was you, guys, what
was your class? Were class of two thousand two? Mg
m T was like the year after us. They were

(20:11):
like maybe three years before you guys. Okay, yeah, ahead
of us. Um if you didn't know that what is
now were we were part of what is now referred
to as the Lin Manuel Miranda era. Actually, like that's
if you ask anybody, that's what's funny, is I mean

(20:31):
one of the lessons of of that I got out
of Wesleyan was when I did the first version of
In the Heights at wesley and it was an eighty
minute show. And to get Latinos in a show, I
had to go beyond the like six white theater majors
that were theater majors. So I had Ralphie from Ebony
Singers in the cast, and I had the result of

(20:52):
like me, casting the net across campus instead of just
people who auditioned for musicals. Um was that we were
a huge hit show because everyone had a friend in
the show. Because that's how you get people to your
show when you're in college. How did you appeal to him? Lynn?
How did you even? Oh? I fly I fled everywhere
and I was in the gospel choir and I flyer

(21:13):
in the gospel Why I just like went beyond like
the theater board called. She posed for art classes as
the naked guy. You know, come on, we're going alright, alright, yes,
the high at the time girlfriend's started, Lynn's girlfriends started

(21:33):
in the Heights, and she was Filipino and she remains
Filipino to this day. But she was like it was.
She was the Filipino girl who played like the Latin
girl from fucking Washington Heights, which was hilarious but great casting.
I didn't succeed in finding latinos. I cast the Netta's
winded as I could, um and Lesli and Filipino is

(21:57):
close enough. Both on tape version of this on tape, Yeah,
you'll never see it. You'll never see it. There's a
record to put I put the opening nights. I actually
did put the opening number on YouTube. You can see
the opening number. You can see a little Filipina alien,
but just part of it at that moment. So don't

(22:21):
a minute. You went so fast, Bill, you spent past
First of all, posing for drawing one class was the
highest paying job on campus. And how much does that learned?
Fourteen an hour that's paid. You told me that. Yeah,
so I was like, it's not photography, it's just people's

(22:43):
bad drawings of me naked. I can live with that. Ye. Now,
for like all kinds of cash, you you start with
quick poses, right, so the first tip of the class,
it's like a one minute one minute, and then you

(23:03):
have the long poses where it's ten minutes where they're
going to kind of bring out the colors and the charcoals,
and those you have to choose very carefully because if
you try to be cute, like you're holding that ship. Yeah,
so a lot of there's a lot of drawings to
be lying down that have surfaced since my fame. People
were like, the take a picture of you and it's
just drowna be lying down because I didn't want to

(23:24):
hold standing up for fifteen minutes. That's at least ten
g naked Manuel. That's the new room brain right now.
It was one guys, they can't be that good. It
was intro to drawing. Wow, boy, that's crazy. So anyway,

(23:45):
Bill killed being music director. And then I was like,
you're working with me, You're coming with me on my shows.
I write my own ship, and um, he sort of
had no choice. It's sort of like how he wound
up on your show. He was just like, oh good.
And then there was line's been doing the same impression
impression of me for like almost twenty years. Here's here's

(24:06):
here's my line on Bill because he says that at
every juncture in our career is from college onward. I
didn't think it was gonna be a big deal. It
was a big deal, idiots, Now that's due. Why do
you always have to tell everybody what I do my
whole resume every show? I just wn't know why. Yeah,

(24:28):
because you're looking amazing whatever. Okay, anyway, so the guys,
did they know how great you guys were at the
time as the whole theater department, like, oh, this is
gonna be our This is gonna be a hit, and
people are gonna always come back to Wesley, And there
has to be that professor that was like scoffing at this,
and now you you came back like giving a master

(24:49):
class ten years later, Like there has to be issue. Actually,
was that In the Heights? Was I kind of peaked
sophomore year because it was really good. It was a
huge hit. We sold cast albums of a college show,
mainly because I couldn't get any This is so so dated,

(25:09):
But like the weekend I had the theater was the
weekend of the Wesleyan Millennium Concert, so all the good
musicians were playing the Wesleyan Millennium Concert. So I couldn't
get any the musicians I wanted to play the weekend
you played the Millennium Concert. I took my sound budget
and I created karaoke tracks. So even in the first

(25:30):
performance of In the Heights, they're singing to play back
that I did at like a studio in Middletown and
so and then I paid the money back by selling albums.
Um so we were the copy of the original. Never okay, yes, anyway,

(25:55):
if you violent so uh wow, you have an Organics
under your belt. That's amazing. Organics. The play first roots album.

(26:16):
That's not a roots album, but it's a roots album. Okay.
Who played our senior concert at Wesleyan anyone? Anyone? The
roots ten ft before we even knew each other, many
many years ago, while you guys were there ye with
on the base during phronology period. Look at the only

(26:39):
the only reason why I remember the santi era was
only because the infamous by Mob Deep came out the
day that we had to play there, their spring fleeing
in in and we were So that's the only time
I remember that in the in the sopran Knows uh

(27:02):
uh the Sopranos ending season series ending, do I remember
abbreviating the show the Roots show so we could rush
off stage to do something else. What's funny is the
Roots played at all our college shows, Like I'm sure
it's a Font's. I'm sure he would'a was at mine.
I saw him in UNTG. They never came to they

(27:23):
never came to Central, but UNCG and they came to Duke. Yeah,
you guys have Bis Marquis as the DJ beforehand? Right?
Oh wait, you perfect college, perfect six. It was awesome
it all the kids six times, without keeping giving a ship,

(27:46):
without like there was no best nothing. He was just like,
fucking so were you doing any were you putting together? Now?
I know there's a difference between participating in productions and
putting it together. Um what what gave you the the

(28:08):
spark or the comption or the nerve to even say
I have to put this together myself? Like, how does
one to do that? At a college? Like I want
to put something together. It's funny because I I went.
I chose Wesleyan because it's one of the few places
that lets you double major in theater and film, and
I really loved film, and I really love theater. And

(28:28):
then like like I just got really practical once I
got there. If you're a film major, this was pre digital,
so you're paying for film. To make your senior film,
you have to pay for it yourself, and the best
you can do is get your short into a festival,
maybe get an agent if the head of the department
likes you more than the other kids and like kind

(28:51):
of pushes you. If you make theater, it's three hundred
bucks for a show and the school pays for it.
So I just remember think like I'm gonna make as
much theater as I can in these four years because
I knew my parents were killing themselves to pay for school. UM.
My dad like literally quit his non for profit job
and went to like a high because I was going

(29:13):
to college. Like I was very aware of that burden.
Was like what my mom's psychologist. Um, And my dad
was the head of a nonprofit called Hispanic Federation that's
sort of this umbrella organization for Latino organizations. And he
went into political consulting the year I went to school
because he was like, I have to make money. And so,

(29:35):
I mean, it's it's not an accident that one of
the major plot lines that in The Heights is like
parents killing themselves to pay for Nina's school and her
kind of accepting that sacrifice and and and instead of
being like I don't want this life, it's it's like,
you know, I'm gonna make the most of it. I'm
gonna make the most of what you guys have done
so that I could be here. Um. And so I

(29:59):
just was like, if I leave Wesley with just a
degree in theater studies, like I don't know what that's
gonna be. So I just like tried to treat it
like a four year workshop, Like I wrote a musical
every year, um, and I would put it up. And
I acted in other people's stuff too, and I, um,
you know, the cool thing about theater majoring is that
you you learn you hang lights for other people shows.

(30:21):
I did set design for other people shows. I did
sounds like you learn all these other different skills, which
helps you in the world because you kind of know
what everyone else does in their respective departments. Because I
will say this, as stoner hippie music I I got
laid X amount of times. As music director in Lynn shows,

(30:42):
I got laid X times a thousand more times than
being stoner hippie drum circle Guy's the time for me
to have the damn sound effects of machines. I wish
that you can't do it this. Yeah, I do want

(31:04):
to know. I mean, you know, no one, no one
can plan lightning in a bottle, or plan a phenomenon
or any of those things. But I have to say
that if anyone has been privy to many a meeting
or a summit meeting for these pitches in which they

(31:30):
promise you the world, I've been that guy, meaning since
since two thousand, I've heard many a pitch about. You know,
there was a point where they were going to try
to bring wild style the Broadway and they described how
we're going to change the world. And I was part

(31:52):
of the meeting when they first started at UM. You
know the famous Tuopo Tupoca two clip. Yeah, play that
that you know got deaded in three weeks. Everything. There
was even a play based on I probably the furthest
I got involved with hip hop and Broadway. If you

(32:17):
remember the the Nike commercials um where they were like
bouncing the ball and rhythm. Yeah, yeah, right, yeah. I
wanted they signed l up. They wanted to do something
about like a street ball, like on the Rutger. That

(32:37):
sort of thing we got. We got, I'll say that
we got about three months into it, three months into workshops.
Here here's the music lineup, Bootsy Collins, Nona Hendricks, Quest Love,
Bootsy Collins, Nona Hendricks, Quest Love, and I think Moms

(33:01):
so that you know, they scored poetry and basketball and
ll O cool J. And you know the thing is
is that Broadways so addicted to this, like to this
tin pan alley jazz fingers like this this this Gerchwin

(33:24):
thing they can't let go, and it's like you, I
mean out out of and there's there's four or five
other players that I've seen or been involved with pitches
in which they go over the top and describing it,
I mean, in your mind, are you thinking, Okay, I'm

(33:45):
finally gonna grid Broadway of its of its disease of
being stuck in the nineteen thirties and just updated, Like,
are you thinking this at all when you're when you're
putting these productions together? Is it just like, hey, it's
it Thursday, and I have a clever idea I want
to get down. Yeah, it's a combo of both and
and it's actually it brings us back to tick tick

(34:06):
boom because I think that I have parents who grew
up with I grew up with Cast albums. My parents
were like that generation who just collected I didn't even
see the shows, but collected the cast albums and and
so I grew up with those and loving those. But again,
I think like for a lot of people, it just
felt like something old white people did and old white

(34:27):
people saw. And I enjoyed it, but it didn't seem like, yeah,
it was like a walled garden. Um and and then
I saw Rent, and that really changed it for me because, um, one,
it took place in the present and that sounds so normal.

(34:48):
But I hadn't seen any musicals that took place in
the present by the time I'm a teenager. Even a
chorus line is a period piece. Um And Okay, I
need to be that guy. What year did you see Rent?
I saw the first year on my seven the last
row of the Nederlander Theater mezzanine too. So you saw
it in nine six. I saw it in seven because

(35:10):
I saw it for my seventeenth birthday. Yeah, well I
didn't know it was seven. And for you that was
life changing, because the thing was when I saw Rent
in two thousand four, two thou five, Yeah, I was
kind of like a different thing. I don't know. Maybe no,

(35:32):
you're you're right, because I remember seeing Rent in two
thousand four, two thousand five, and it was it felt
like a copy of a copy of a copy by
that like I remember seeing it. We had a friend
who was a swing in it until I got to
go around the era you saw it. I remember seeing
one of the actresses like straight up falling asleep during
lot bbom and it's like that show doesn't work if

(35:55):
like everybody doesn't believe in it in every iota of
their being. And you saw like thee cast um and
but I remember when because Hamilton's is able to resonate
powerfully with or without the nucleus cast. Well yeah, but

(36:18):
I also think we also as a production team are
so much more involved than other production teams at this
stage in the musical's life, like still weekly zooms with
our castman like we're Tommy checks in, our director checks in,
like more than anybody. But but for me, Rent and
nine seven was a contemporary show and it's not like,

(36:40):
oh my gosh, that sounds like it could be on
the radio. It still sounded very rock on Broadway. But
to me it ended the conversation about rock on Broadway.
It was sort of like Jonathan Larson was like, rock
music and pop music and Broadway should reflect each other.
They just should be friends. That's why we like to
gercwin he on the radio and then you would go

(37:01):
see the song you heard on the radio in the
shows that night. And there's no reason popular music and
theater music shouldn't be in conversation with each other. All
the time. And that was I mean, if anything, that's
the thesis of rent uh and the score. And so
I just extrapolated that to hip hop. I was just like,
I don't understand why every time I see hip hop
reference in a Broadway musical, it's like in quotes, it's like,

(37:25):
isn't it crazy that characters are rapping? I was like,
hip hop is thirty years old, it's so way past
a joke at this point, that um and and it's
some of the best storytelling in music, So why aren't
you all in conversation with each other? So even in
the musicals I've wrote in high school, I was always
putting hip hop in them. In the Heights had a

(37:46):
ton of hip hop in it. It was just I
just felt like it was a more exciting way to
tell a story through music, uh than than what I
was seeing. I think with hip hop two, like, you
can get more content. Like you know what I'm saying.
If you give a singer sixteen bars and you give
a rapper sixteen bars, I'm saying, I'm gonna say a

(38:07):
whole lot more, you know what I'm saying, because it's
just more content. There's something to say to about the
audience that hip hop attracts and what that would bring
to Broadway in the theater and what they were afraid of, right, yeah, no,
I mean it's so funny when I see when I
would see David do the first round of interviews on
Hamilton's and like people be like, you're rabbids so fast
and He's like, oh no, I'm rapping fast for Broadway. Right.

(38:33):
The laughing is it's slower than anything Technine's ever said
in his life, right, the same thing. Yeah, exactly, all
those world like shoppers, but like you know, it is
in the way Hamilton's so past do. But but the
reason Hamilton's works is because it is the story of

(38:56):
a writer, and I don't think people think of hip
hop artists as writers. And that was that was the
only that was the insight I brought to it, was like,
this is a guy who wrote himself and into every situation.
And that's what our favorite mcs do. They write about
their reality so well that they transcend them that when
you go across the world with your African High Life

(39:16):
band Bill, you will meet people on the other side
of the world who can wrap every lyric Ready to
Die or the eight miles soundtrack or things fall apart,
like it transcends um because of its specificity, and and
that's you know, when I was reading that book, that's
to me what Hamilton's did. And so I was like,

(39:37):
this is the hip hip hop is the only way
to do this story? And how long did you spend
right in Hamilton? How long the process was there? I
started in two thousand eight and we opened on Broadway
in two thousand ship. Yeah, it was like because it
was also like I kind of felt like a snake
staring down an elephant, like for me to digest this
history and then be able to like spit it back

(39:59):
out in a way that it like told the story,
you know, because I had to just do a ton
of research full stop and then um, you know, attack
every moment and decide. You know, it's just a million decisions.
And I had to read a lot of boring papers
by people who are smarter than me and have it

(40:21):
makes sense to me in a way that then I
could write it and embody it and tell those stories
and make it make it makes sense to the audience. Yeah,
and make it sense makes sense to myself. And the
other thing in the Secret sauce is like a lot
of the energy in Hamilton's, Like, can you believe this
should happen? Can you believe this should happen? Because I'm
experiencing that as I'm reading this story, like and then
he's five president and then he shoots it like it's

(40:42):
sucking crazy um, and it's a soap opera. Um. But yeah,
it took a long time for me to digest it.
I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the fact
that when you go on vacation, m you take Like
right now, Obama is about to turn in a two

(41:05):
volume book, and volume one, I believe, is seven hundred
and ninety pages, so already a book the size of
Hamilton's that you read when you went on vacation. You
finished that book on vacation. I don't. I don't know

(41:25):
that I finished it on vacation. But this was pre kindled.
This is before you could put fifty books in your No,
that's what I'm saying. I don't want to pack twenty books.
I'm just gonna pack one big book and I'll be
my vacation book. I was just like, who takes a
seven page book on vacation? I just knew the guy
died in a duel at the end. That was it

(41:46):
made that to it made it interesting and like I
learned that in school, and I was just like, this
would be interesting, yeah, because that was my coe was
one next question, and I was like, why Hamilton's and
not Lincoln or Jefferson or whoever? Right, like what or
Icebergs made you speaking? I think, honestly, it's because there
was so much I didn't know by the time I started,
right Like what got the book off the shelf and

(42:07):
into my hands was I knew this guy got shot
by the vice president, like and I think around the
time Dick Cheney had just shot a dude like on
an accidental hunting in the face, and his face was
the face book shot in the face. Um, and uh

(42:27):
so that was enough to just like pique my curiosity
because that's really all I knew other than he was
on the tent. And then when I opened the book
and realized he was born and grew up in the Caribbean,
that was interesting to me. I didn't know any of
the white dudes on money were not born here. Um.
And then um, when he got the scholarship, he this

(42:47):
hurricane destroys the island, he writes about it, and they
collect money for a scholarship to send him to not
the States, it wasn't the States yet the fucking mainland. Um.
You know. That's when I was like, well, this guy,
that's what my dad did. Like my dad grew up
in Puerto Rico and got a scholarship to come to
New York at the same age. Because my dad is

(43:10):
way smarter than me. He had graduated college by the
time he was eighteen. He skipped all the grades. He
was like Puerto Rican doogie. Um. And so it that
temperament of like how he had. He was like, I
gotta a funk out of here. I gotta make a
life for myself. Like that was a very It reminded
me of my dad, and it also felt fundamentally like
a hip hop story, like I'm gonna get the funk

(43:32):
out of where I am and get to a better
place in life. Um. And that's the stuff of good musicals.
You want the character who has a really strong want.
You want you know, fucking uh Tony singing Something's coming.
You want uh alfa bus singing I'm gonna meet the
fucking wizard. Um. You know that's the stuff of good

(43:55):
musicals because they've just got this engine in them. Uh um, So,
can I ask you a question? And I'm curious in
between like the heights, how does as a working artist?
Because you said how long it took for you to
get to Hambletons? Like, what are you doing in the
in between years? It was in writing songs? Yeah, well,

(44:21):
hold on, we haven't completed this full story. So we
all right, so graduating from college, we need to get
the freestyle of supreme. Wait, hold on, we're getting there,
so Thinn. So we graduate college and then so we
both moved home for like six months. I never moved home,
so he we we apartment. So Lynn rents his apartment

(44:45):
with two other people. It's five thousand Broadway and so
two Street, which is like twenty blocks now, like ten
blocks from Lynn's parents who live on Bobooo, get that
addressed to. I forgot you're like an important person. Stop
looking at me like that. So so so, uh okay,

(45:07):
So I move into this apartment. So if it rains outside,
it rains inside. We make pizza bagels, like solely because
we don't have any money. We skateboard big beans, we
get we skateboard in the house, there's like a mattress,
Like if you fall on the skateboard, you take a
nap on the mattress, like it's gross. It's gross, and

(45:29):
you bring people there and they're like, this is gross. Anyway,
we lived there for like four years, and I worked
as a substitute teacher, right, and I worked at the
MTV because my dad got me a job working in
the I T department and MTV. So I was like
answering emails sent into MTV. This is all true. And
during during my lunch breaks, Lynn and I would meet

(45:50):
at the Drama Bookshop, which was then Street between Something
and Something, and we would go down in the basement
and we would work on in the heights. So he
would bring a song, we would do a thing blah
blah blah blah. That crew, right, and this one on
for years and then and then finally, after you know,
charming enough people and doing enough work, we went up

(46:11):
off Broadway on thirty seven Arts on thirty seventh Street
and that was like an amazing, phimongous moment. Meanwhile, we're
both he's still subbing, I'm still working this totally dead
end job. At one point, I think I was like
being paid to transcribe things for people like request live. Yeah,

(46:32):
translator for Carson Davis and uh what we other we
had other weird jobs Lynn what else. Olynn wrote music
for his dad's like campaign as Yeah, just like I mean,
that's the easiest gig of just like sad Cord this
politicians as crazy because as your career is blowing up,

(46:54):
it's always your dad's like he's going in a whole
different Okay, so go ahead. So every Sunday we would
go to lynn parents house and watch the Soprano when
it was live, Like we would get off the feed
us and they had cable and we didn't, right, and
we had no food. So it's like the only real
thing we ate was every Sunday at Lynn's parents house
with like Lynn's grandmother, his cousin like his parents. It

(47:16):
was awesome and we went every Sunday and we want
to watch the Sopranos every week. Yeah. In fact, we
saw the last okay uh, and then in the heights
went went up off Broadway and we were like, holy
sh My first acting job, my first TV job, was
on the last season of The The Sopranos. I got on
I was a bell hoop, bellhop. Look Mr Herman paging

(47:41):
Mr hermanshap Literally my line is I don't know, I
don't know, and I'm so great. You can see me
look down from my mark. Where to stop in the episode?
Do you know the name of the episode. I'm sorry.
My Apple TV is right in front of you right now.
You miss it. It's called remember when I'm mere you

(48:03):
missed to reenacted? Dam was about to do? I don't know,
I don't know, and then Genlpena goes fucking guy. But
you got to share screen time with the great can
Paully was in that scene too, right then? Okay, Paully

(48:26):
is pussy. No pussy is different. Okay, I gotta go back. Damn,
you're in the last Wow, that's amazing when you went
to Vegas? Right, Sorry, the Sopranos. This is what happens
in Quest of Supreme. I'm still listening. Go ahead. So

(48:46):
during this time getting towards off Broadway, I moved out
of that house and moved in with my girlfriend who
then became my wife, and I and then and then
where they come for the imagining, and then right on time,

(49:09):
unco we were we were rehearsing that before we did this,
and then what happened Lynn Lynn started dating his now wife.
We had children anyway, and so then in the Heights
happens and we have careers. Career How long was in
the Heights? How long was right at that process? It
was from I mean basically from the moment I met
Tommy cam when I graduated in two thousand and two

(49:31):
to opening night, like January of two thousand and eight.
It was my twin like basically in the height of
my twenties Hamilton. Lots of other gigs and and and
sort of amazing things in between. But those are the
broad strokes. So with theater, I'm curious to know how

(49:52):
long do you have I guess to edit something before
it goes up? You know how if you been open
in terms of reviews, Yeah, every show is different. For UM.
For Heights, we gave ourselves a solid four weeks so
that we can make changes because the audience is the

(50:15):
last collaborator and and they'll they'll tell you what's working,
what's not, and what needs finessing. And it may not
even be the writing of it. It may be that
that numbers not ending with the right light or this
dance sequence isn't landing the way we wanted to land.
So pre that's what previews is for, is to get
the audience in. And yeah, and and and I mean

(50:40):
Hamilton's was interesting because we did the first performance at
the Public and it ran at three hours and ten minutes. Yeah,
about three hours and ten minutes, and it was sort
of like, well, shit, I like lame is, but I
don't want to be longer than las um And so

(51:02):
first nup and Tommy was so, you know, Tommy is
is smart, full stop, but he's also politically really smart,
because sometimes people get salty when their stuff is cut,
Like you can do cuts the wrong way in a
way that the cast doesn't feel in on it. And
he said, the first thing we need to do is
cut any song addressing any character that is not on stage.

(51:23):
And I had a hot sixteen bars about John Adams,
who was never played by anyone. It was like an
off stage address, and that was the first thing we cut.
And it was great because it also sent a message
to the rest of the cast, like we just cut
the composer's best sixteen So this is not it's not
it's a it's best for the show. It's not about

(51:46):
whether you're doing it well or not, like this is
about honing the material. So we cut all my Ship
first and brought like brought down ten minutes and then
and then you know, we got it down to about
we got it down to like two fifty at the
public and then we used the jump to Broadway to
cut another fifteen minutes. So before it goes to Broadway,

(52:09):
you have the previews that are for an audience where
that's almost kind of like, I don't say a focus group,
but that's where you like you said, that's it's a
nightly focused group, and it's and again it's also it's
not even about like they laughed at this. They didn't
laugh at this, because sometimes you get the wrong laugh.
Like we had a line in History Has Its Eyes
on You where Chris Jackson was getting a laugh at

(52:31):
the top of the song because I can't remember what
it was, but he basically name checks the French and
Indian War, and the nerds in the audience were like,
I know about that, and it was like, no, no,
we don't want to laugh here. Like that made me true,
But it's a laugh when we don't need it. Um
similar with the l L quote we had. We had

(52:51):
we used to have an I need love quote in
the show. Um and a fair uh that song used
to start when I'm alone in my room. Sometimes took
it out and yeah, I took it out because the
audience was laughing at the reference and they weren't listening
to what was happening, you know, like it was a
free reference. And even l L. Reach that was like

(53:14):
you get clear it. I'm cool with it. Um, and
that was amazing. Feel like literally like treated at me
like let's talk about it, but just a laugh at
the wrong moment. So we cut it. Yeah. I saw
in the Heights, Um, I still I still yet to watch.
I saw in the Heights the local Um, the original

(53:34):
theater group did it here in Roby, Carolina and a
good friend of mine, Carly Jones, she played Camilla, and Um,
we saw it and it was a great show. Man.
I hit Bill afterwards. I seen him the program. I
was like, Yo, this was this is really dope because
I'm not a theater guy, you know at all. You know,
I hadn't really you know, That's why I just hearing
all these stories. I'm just curious to know, like how

(53:54):
they're worked out and how they're fleshed out. And you
know when you say you started something oh two and
y'a were working it up until oh eight, It's like,
damn like because I feel like you would shine in
the indeed absolutely, but in that you should be in
Hamilton's in the new I mean in a new version

(54:20):
of it, not again like I feel like there's not
jazz hands thirties input to though not just the performance.
Well again like that, I have to say, like after
Heights closed we ran from two thousand eight through the
end of two thousand ten, there was a part of
me that was a little frustrated that hip hop land

(54:42):
was over here and musical theater was over here, and
there was so little then Diagram like I could not
get the hip hop artists I admired two into the Rogers.
I could not get awareness of the show in the
hip hop community. It did well in the Latin community,
and it brought Latin audiences to Broadway in a big way.
All it was there, but it was just like no
one was even checking for it. I felt like I

(55:03):
was jumping up and waving my arms and and it
hadn't happened in a real way. Like I remember run
DMC came to the show, like a couple of like
like legends came and they were it was really like
huge for me. Um. But with with Hamilton's I just
I remember wanting so I was just like, this thing
is such a fucking love letter to hip hop, Like

(55:23):
it would be a shame. And I know it's sailing
over the heads of the strictly musical theater fans. We're
not getting the ten Crack Commandments reference or the Mob
Deep reference or the you know, brand Nubian reference. Um,
because it's all the nineties hip hop ship. I like
I crammed into the show. Um. And so do you
think the point was an issue? Because maybe not not

(55:46):
for those those famous people, but for their audience and
for the people who was around them that they couldn't
had a conversation with. I think it's I think it's
always an issue, and it's one of the biggest issues
facing theater. I mean, that's gonna lie. I definitely wanted
to see it and I still have yet. I gotta now,
I gotta get Disney Plus or password. Yes, I'm working

(56:08):
on that devices friends good I got. Yeah, So I
was I was really gratified when Hamilton's was received the
way it was because the folks that I knew would
enjoy it were able to see it. Have you seen it?
Have you seen it now since it's on Disney Plus

(56:29):
and it's becoming more accessible, UM, do you have you
seen or do you foresee an influx of it being
used as a tool in teaching, like in school and
stuff like that. Well, that was one of the first
things that we realized coming out of it, Like two
hundred and fifty thousand students have seen Hamilton's thanks to
edge haam this educational program we did because we realized

(56:49):
really quick like, oh, this is becoming a buzz that
is bigger than we can control. And if kids can't
see the show, we sucked up because this is like
a semester of a p U S history in about
two and a half hours. UM. And so we partnered
with UM a nonprofit called the Guilder Learnman Association that

(57:10):
basically deals in teaching American history and UM we created
edgeham which is these dedicated shows that are these student matinees.
We start with the students do a curriculum where they
write about whoever they want in American history and we
I mean you can go if you google edgeham you'll
see the most amazing ship like Phyllis Wheatley poems and

(57:33):
Sally Hemming songs. I like, people really like take the
assignment and like of like, oh, what's the history I'm
not learning about, I'm going to write about that, And
they perform it for us. They get the broad Rey
debut and they perform on stage and the best group
from each school performs. They all scream for each other.
Then they do a Q and A with the cast,
and then we perform the matinee for them, and it's

(57:55):
the It's the biggest legacy of the show because I
feel like it opens up um, it opens up history
in a way that says this is yours, this is
ours and oh no no, uh now, I was just
gonna ask you, um, you know, in regards to Hamilton's, Uh,
this was a couple of this is a while back.
Um you're on Twitter and uh Tracy Clayton, Uh okay

(58:19):
playing family. I was like, we all kind of go
way back, but y'all were having a discussion about about
Hamilton's and you were very open like to the criticisms
of like you know what didn't really address kind of
the hards of slavery and him being like the slave owner,
like all that stuff. And you know, and I thought
what you said was very fair of just like, look,
I tried to get in what I could only had

(58:39):
you know, two and a half hours. You know, Um,
how do you decide what to cut, what to leave in,
what's pertinent to the story? Um? How do you just
how do you wrestle with all that and tell them
the story? Every show is different. With Hamilton's. The relentlessness
was the thing, like if it didn't, I mean, we
had we cut characters because they were in Hamilton's life

(59:01):
for long enough. You know, Like the guy who eulogized
him is not in the show because he didn't meet
him ntil later in his life. Um. Ben Franklin kind
of an important guy not in the show because he
didn't interact with Hamilton's enough. Um. And so it's interesting
when when you have the success that Hamilton has had.

(59:22):
What what happens is everyone like gets interested because the
show has made them interested, and then they go and
they do their research and they go, wait a minute,
this in. You put this in, and I and I'm
over here, Like, I know, I've been researching this thing
for six parting years, but I wanted to get you know,

(59:43):
I'm writing a musical. I'm not writing a history report,
and so I'm I'm open to the criticism because I
know what's on the cutting room floor and I know
that um, you know, you know it's interesting. Like I
remember in the first year, UM, people really discovered John Lawrence.
John Lawrence was the most anti slavery of that group

(01:00:04):
of friends. UM. And he also people believe, and and
there's a really strong case for it that he and
Hamilton's were lovers. Um. Like the letters they write to
each other are just as passionate as some of the
ones Hamilton's wrote to Eliza. And people said, what about this,
and I said, yeah, maybe probably. The thing is Lawrence

(01:00:27):
doesn't survive with the act, so I can't really go
there because I'm not going to get to explore it
in act too. So that's why I didn't explore that
facet of him and Leo and other I'm curious because
there's a lot of people who have had the experience
of creating by opics or you know, James based on
people's lives. Did you ever have to talk to other

(01:00:47):
folks that had that similar experience that they had to
cut out stuff and they were criticized because I thought
about as you were talking, I was like, yeah, I know,
I remember when people came and Spike Lee because even
with that long as movie, it wasn't enough for Malcolm X. Yeah.
I mean that's just the part of the and the
and the only do you can say is everyone's right.
So but it's not all in there. And also, like

(01:01:08):
criticism is not cancelation, it's criticism. And I can take criticism,
you know what I mean, Like that's I'm a big
boy and I know what's not in there. And um,
what I console myself with is it sparks conversations about
what's not in it and about the faults of these
folks and and how flawed the documents are and how
flawed these men were. The thing I take issue with

(01:01:31):
is I don't think we glorify these guys for a second.
I just don't think that was not my aim. Um.
My aim was to tell as compelling a story as
I have while I have you in that theater for
two and a half hours, and paint them as flawed
as a piece of musical theater can paint them. Um,
but like, yes, you're all right, that's not in it.
That's not in it. That's not it. That's not in it.

(01:01:52):
Like and you know, and and and this was the
springboard for that discussion. Yeah. Do you think, um, you know,
because scene in the hikes and just seeing um yeah,
just seeing like all like just your black and Latino
faces on stage, you know what I mean? Um, that
was probably the first uh theater you know, show I've

(01:02:12):
been to since I was small. You know, I hadn't
been in like decades. And um, you know, do you
think that these stories and the way you're telling them,
have you seen that open the door for more black
and Latino people to tell their stories on Broadway? Yeah?
I mean I'm always pessimistic about Broadway. I'm actually really
optimistic about this moment because we're in the middle of

(01:02:34):
a civil rights movement in our country and businesses on pause.
So you cannot say you don't have time to deal
with this. You cannot say you don't have time to
talk about equity and the kinds of stories you're choosing
to put your money into as Broadway producers. Um, but listen,
I I started writing In the Heights because I don't

(01:02:56):
dance well enough to be in West Side Story. And
I when I was a senior in high school, this
musical by Paul Simon called The Capeman came out and
it was about Puerto Rican gang members in the nineteen fifties,
and as much as I love Paul Simon, I was like,
what the fuck, Like this is a very overrepresented group

(01:03:17):
on Broadway at this point, Forto Rican gang members from
the nineteen fifties. Can we literally have a show where
we don't have a fucking knife in our hands? Um?
And So In the Heights was born out of an
oh shit, no one's gonna write your dream show because
Paul Simon was one of my favorite writers about Puerto Rico,
Like I'm not expecting Paul Simon, and he loved the

(01:03:39):
music and he wrote music that really fits in that world.
But like I just I just remember because I also
had Mark Anthony had Ruben Blades, like it had a
lot of Mys in it. Like I remember having the
highest hopes of like, oh shit, here comes your dream show.
It's the Cape Man, and then it super wasn't and
I was like it was the wake up moment of

(01:04:01):
like you have to create the thing that you want
to use for it to exist, because no one's going
to make it interesting enough. When we when In the
Heights first came out, we got bad press saying that
like in the Heights didn't have enough teeth, like it
wasn't a real representation of Washington Heights because and we
were like all about but we were like, we lived there.

(01:04:23):
It's there. We lived there the whole time. Because if
you're only access to a neighborhood is seeing it on
the eleven o'clock news and you have no engagement with
it beyond that, that's all you see. I was I
was curious what spoke to y'all you and built since
we talked about there weren't many spaces for hip hop
in that way, but when you were growing up, Like,

(01:04:45):
what were the shows I know you listened to the
cast albums, What were the shows that spoke to you
all to that this is I might want to be
in this. Well again, I'm born in n So there's
just never a point where hip hop is not a
part of my life. I have an older sister. She
gets all the credit from my hip hop education. She
took me to Beat Street in the theater. I cried, Yeah,

(01:05:12):
she took me to Wild Style, she took me to
Crush Groove. For my sixth grade graduation. My sister's present
to me was a pair of Jibo jeans and she
took me to see Class Act. Starting. You'd be like,
that's her, that's hip hop. I stole her Black Sheet album.

(01:05:35):
I stole her Day Lass was Dead album. Like that
was like digging in my sister's albums. Was how I
fell in love with hip hop. It's funny y'all say
that because somebody I told somebody yesterday we were interviewing
Lynn and it literally were like, do you make sure
you can bring up the fact that Kid and Play
changed how hip hop was proceeded in media and changed
the way, like started the real diversification of hip hop.

(01:05:55):
And I was like, I never thought about that, Like
that kid didn't play Class Act. House Party. House Party
was then to with the car Toon. Here's another great
thing of sels. House Party three has one of the
funniest lines cinema history when they accidentally give the grandma

(01:06:16):
the porno instead of the One of the funniest lines
in cinema history. What talking about Lynn is like a
mirror going record shopping for people. One of Lynn's great
things when we were younger was he would make mixed
CDs like for everything and all the time. And so
like we had this bathroom that had like um this

(01:06:39):
wallpaper sort of sleep had like like hundreds of mixed CDs.
So like we had this we had a boom box
what you call a CD player in the bathroom and
it was only in the bathroom, so we would play
we would turn on his big CDs and we listen
to everything. And so like those were the days of
like pun and and that kind of stuff and B

(01:07:00):
I G. Like that's all we listened to. It was
like really heavy Latin music, so like and Alberta, Santa
Rosa and like and then like fucking just like hip
hop all day long and like all this stuff that
we're talking about. And so that's also where I started dance.

(01:07:23):
Had just with all the speaking of dance, like with
all the dancers, like specifically in the heightst like the
break dancing that you found were they were those people
on Broadway that already knew how to break or did
you have to go? It was a mix of like
breakers and folks who had who had a little theater experience.

(01:07:45):
But we had a lot of debuts within the Heights,
like there were so many debuts with Heights, and with
Hamilton's Ralmo's made his debut. Like, you know, the thing
is the shows I write are made for people who
don't ordinarily get invited to get us on the board,
like so with Heights, Bring It On broke the record
for the number of debuts. We had thirty two Broadway

(01:08:07):
debuts with that show. Um, and that's the one I wrote.
I co wrote in between in the Heights in Hamilton's.
But you know, sort of the same principles at work,
Like just like pop music and theater music should be friends,
Like there's no reason there should be a separation. There
is there a pressure to bring a name two the

(01:08:28):
show when you present it. I remember um and uh
and Fayla maybe during the last well, well we'll not
during the last one. But basically us getting a name
would ensure that it could have an additional four months.
An additional pressure comes with time. I think, I think,

(01:08:48):
and every show goes through a version of it where
the you hope the novelty of a new musical catches
on and the word of mouth catches on um. But
there's a point at which the professional Broadway goers have
all seen it um and unless you have something to
attract them, you know, and that's when the name thing comes.
But like I remember a Broadway producer told me, like

(01:09:11):
getting a name, a quote unquote celebrity name to be
in your show is like starting hard drugs, Like you
don't get off it once you start off. You can't
just put so and so from Dancing the Stars and
then have like just a talented guy who auditioned after him, Like,
once you're on that ride, you don't get off. Who's
the who's the biggest name that we would know that

(01:09:36):
has approached you about wanting to do Hamilton's for like
a second like you do every month white actor wants
to play King George? Really yeah, because they yeah, because
they love Hamilson, but they know it's not right to
ask to play Hamilton or because those are for us,
and so they go, cannot play King George, I mean

(01:09:58):
insert white everybody here, and they go kind of and
also they realize it's not a lot of work. It's
one song and two uprises, right right, So that's been
the most probably most requested. It is like mad famous
white people are like I could play King George the
way that the way that. I don't know the system
of of how Broadway works, but is it that only

(01:10:21):
in your first year are you eligible for Tony Run
and then that's Tony Tony happens sort of within the
season in which you come out, which pre pandemic was
sort of June, because that's when the Tony's are to
June to like May April, May of the following year,
and then that's your that's your class. Okay. So if

(01:10:43):
there wasn't if there wasn't a pandemic, and say Clooney
wanted to or bad Brad Pitt wanted to play King
George and he killed it, would he would he be?
It would be for the love of the game that
already happened. Yeah, there's no There have been occasionally campaigns

(01:11:04):
for a Tony Um Award for like best Replacement, which
I think is honestly like celebrities being like can I
just be in Chicago? And sometimes it's really like warranted,
you know, like I remember seeing you know. The most
famous case is, uh, they did a production and to

(01:11:26):
get your Gun with Bernardette Peters and she was amazing,
but then they got like Reba McIntyre, Like nobody is
more fucking perfect for that part than so people are like, man,
I wish there was a Tony for best replacement because
she really liked Transformed. So there's a case to me.
But they do have a revival category. So how long

(01:11:47):
would Hamilton's have to be dormant for it to get
the best revival? Or is it a five or ten
year rule. I don't think there's a hard and fast rule.
You just get like I guess, like all the way
people being like that was quick that you're back. Um,
Like I remember when like Late Miss did their revival,
everyone was like this was closed. I didn't even know.

(01:12:10):
I never know the way. Yeah, I know, man, what
are some of your favorite musicals? Because I'm you know,
this is all like it's very new to me, and um,
I remember, Um, actually you talked about theater now, I think,
but I actually did hear when I was a senior
in high school. I didn't. I didn't you come on, man,

(01:12:33):
this was in high school. This is in North Carolina,
Like we had to cut all kinds of ships out
of the plate like it was so much by me. No,
we we cut that ship out. We we were so
much a lot of these appropriate That ship was like
an hour. Yeah, that ship was an episode of date Line,

(01:12:55):
So you know what I mean. But like but yeah,
but but I did it. But but now, so I
was curious to know, like what some of your favorite
musicals and like what makes them good because to me
just kind of as an outsider, it all kind of
sounds the same. Like Hair spoke to me because I
knew Pete Rock. Sample was just like just wrote great

(01:13:18):
bass ship like McDermott, you know, saying incredible baselines in
all of Galt McDermott's ship. So like from that, all
this stuff, like, um, I can tell you they're gonna
shout out Annie in this episode and I ain't gonna
get no love. But that's fine. It's a girl thing.
It's fine. It's fine. Well I was gonna start with Annie. Thanks.

(01:13:41):
I don't know what you know what wait the secret
secret uh fact, I was part of the of the
of the letter writing process of jay Z asking permission
to use that sample. I know if he talked about
ruse he was like I listened to this and It

(01:14:06):
gave me faith that I was going to get out.
One way that that letter got out. It's in his book.
Oh yeah, right after Hamilton's. Before Hamilton, I was I
was the sounding board for do you think this will work?
And I was like, oh, okay, like and I was like,

(01:14:29):
this really happened. I didn't know. I was like, okay,
I still want to be the best songs of all
musical time inside of everything that happened in the whiz
so Andy, Like, what's what's the your take on Cats?
I've never seen Cats, but like I've heard it kind
of get trashed later and it was not a Cats guy.
So like when I was a kid, you know, my

(01:14:51):
parents had a lot of cast albums, but I was
like a lot of Hamilton's fans and that, like I
just kind of imagined the shows we didn't have money
for playing. You know, no production of Mandela man is
gonna match my mental version of Mandela Mancha. I've still
never seen it, um, but we saw the like eighties
Holy Trinity of Phantom, La Missing Cats, those were the

(01:15:11):
three musicals in the eighties and Lame is like when
I remember most about it, I felt asleep. I was
seven I remember sort of the fact that, um, the Confrontation,
which is as hip hop as that show gets where
it's like val Jean and Javer singing their parts at
each other. And I always wanted a meth red Man

(01:15:33):
version of the Confrontation, just like, yeah, warning you shove,
this is like yelling at each other. Um, I love
that song. I'm just glad they made it a movie,
so I know what you're talking about. Yeah, I was
like I couldn't find go through once. But what I
remember the most is my parents buying the two CD set.

(01:15:55):
There was like one of the first CDs we owned,
because this is when they still sold them in the
long in long box, and um my mom would cry
every time they played. She would play bring Him Home
and just like weep, And I remember I think the
seeing how that music affected my parents made it more
interesting to me. Like the fact that it could make

(01:16:16):
my parents cry was a huge deal. And then Phantom
was just my ship. Like Phantom is about an ugly
songwriter who's like, if you don't like me, I'm gonna
funk everybody. Well that I related to that. I was like,
go on Phantom, um, and then Cats, like I just
remember the cats coming out and pawn at you in

(01:16:36):
the audience. I I didn't really have any patience. I
didn't get it and I wasn't into it like it
had a moment. I wasn't. I missed the moment. I
was too young. Any well, not any thoughts on the movie.
But is there fear or trepredation when something that's such
a sure shot doesn't translate? Well, that was never a

(01:17:02):
sure shot. That's that's the that's the thing that like
you from outside looking time out, from outside looking in, Yeah,
looking looking in, I'm thinking like, Okay, they got all
their all their porns in a row and it's coming

(01:17:24):
out for Christmas, And how can I not expect this
to be like this is it? Like what? Yeah? What happened?
How did that turn into istar? Because it's about cats
and it has no black period. It has it has
one incredible eighties ballad for the ages with memory and

(01:17:50):
Jennifer Hudson singing. That is not enough for a whole movie,
although it is a wonderful sequence in the movie. Um
and like camp, No, it's not that it's even due
to it's that it was sort of like this cult
favorite that I think was successful because it was so
out of the box that you had to see it.

(01:18:10):
And then I think it ran a long time because
you don't need to speak a word of English to
enjoy Cats. So it was a huge international hit. You
could just be like, what's on Broadway? Like you come
from any country in the world, what's on Broadway? Cats?
Let's go see Cats? Like it just became this hit
that you had to see it just it became synonymous

(01:18:31):
with Broadway in a very real way. But if you look,
if you actually took a closer look, like, there's no story.
These cats all say, I want to go. This is
a song about me. This is a song about me.
Jennifer Hussanson's memory. Okay, it's her. Let's go remember the
last play that worked on film? I see it. That's

(01:18:51):
it's interesting because nonation everything to me, you conversation, because
it's about to be a real black conversation about the Whig.
Here we go that I was trying to avoid the Whiz.
I was trying to listen. The Whiz is one of
the greatest hard movies of our time is Thinks the

(01:19:15):
Trash Monsters. As you say, the Whiz on Mushrooms is
even better. All bet cats on mushrooms is much more?
Is there answer to that question? Has there been a
great film? Let's play on the film. So he was
my thing. I believe there are great movie musicals. I

(01:19:36):
think adapting a stage musical to film is one of
the hardest things you can do. I like the chorus line.
Do you like the chorus line movie? You like the
chorus line the movie? I didn't? Is there you have?
I watched it like fifteen times? Well, I think if
you watch the chorus line the show first, what's in
the movie is like what's happening? Okay? Okay? Yeah? About

(01:20:00):
having how you experience it? You know, because there's great
performances in the chorus Line movie, but the show is
so much about that line and everyone being equal that
like the movie is like where are we? What's happening? Like,
what are we following? Michael Douglas, Yes, he was the director.
What I was talking about I so knowing that you

(01:20:23):
have that level of scrutiny as a fan, you still
treat movies and you know you're still a fan first
before you're a suit. How much adjustment did you have
to make to in the Heights the movie? I think
the gold standard of a movie adaptation is Cabaret. The

(01:20:45):
Cabaret movie is completely different from the show. You wouldn't
recognize it, but it's genius and it is its own thing.
And when you go see the show, it is genius
in its own way. But it's it's just they're different things.
And that's how we approached in the Heights. We were like,
we cannot put the show on stage. It's a different medium.

(01:21:05):
You can't put a two acts show in a three
act structure. Um. And so a lot of the credit
for I think Heights is an amazing adaptation, but a
lot of the credit goes to Chiara, who really had
distance from it. When she wrote the screenplay. She was
the she was my co writer for the show, and
she wrote the libretto for the show. Um. And she

(01:21:25):
made a bunch of really bold choices, UM. To update it.
That means cutting some songs, that means but it also
means opening up the world in the way. The other
thing we did that was so important was we shot
on location and we cast this thing, like you can't
just be like Hollywood good. You have to like be

(01:21:46):
you have to not look out of place on a
hundred seventy watts where things that makes sense, Like you've
got to it's it's got to. Yeah, it's gotta have
real authenticity. And and so I think our movie is
a really good adaptation because it's not faithful, but it's
faithful in the right ways. It's faithful to the spirit,
but not the this happens, and this happens, this happens,

(01:22:08):
and this happens. Like I think that's where, like I
think that's where the Red Movie is less successful. They
use the original cast fifteen years after the fact, and
they're all incredibly talented, but those aren't twenty some things anymore.
It's a different story, different story. It just is a
different story. And so you know that's that's the tricky thing.

(01:22:32):
Now this is totally off subject, but I feel like
only you can explain this to me. Okay, So in Quarantining,
I got caught up. One of the best movie uh
podcasts that you can listen to is the Channel who
Happens The production Yo, the Safty Brothers and Paul Thomas

(01:22:54):
Anderson alone that episode where they have directors interview each other.
So when Uncut Jim's came out, Paul Thomas Anderson and
interviewed the Safty Brothers. But there's an episode where Martin
Scorsese finally talks about New York, New York and as
a Scorsese fan, for the life of me and this

(01:23:16):
is weird of all the films, what convinced Michael Jackson
to do the Bad Film with Scorsese was New York
New York. He had never seen Raging Bull or none
of that stuff. But as a Scorsese fan, I knew
that he had a nervous breakdown doing New York, New York.
But I never knew how that film. I don't know

(01:23:37):
if I can't judge musicals on film to know, like
I'm like like with the quarters line, like I like everything,
Like I'm the guy that saw Staying Alive and was
like it was good. Right, But that's the thing. You
can't trust nothing under if you're under the age of twelve,

(01:23:59):
you like any thing that's right, Like you know what
I'm saying, probably right after Beat Street, right, I liked
all that ship. I didn't realize that what I'm asking
is was assuming that you lie saw New York, New York,
was it bad or like I don't think it was

(01:24:21):
so much that it was bad. I just think it
was an uneasy mix of styles. It's Jake La Matta
in a musical. It's Travis Bigel in a musical like
Scorsese doesn't stop. Scorsese ng and he's Mentaliza Minelli and
he beats her up um, but then you're bursting into
song and I don't think that okay. Similar similar to

(01:24:50):
Jungle Fever, Like for some reason, Scorsese won't let this
out on you know, it's really hard to find it is.
It started somewhere in my storage room. But this is
my first time ever hearing of this movie. I've never
heard of it. He was all the Yankee games is
from that movie that was never written for a musical,

(01:25:12):
like that was written for that movie. And then Sinatra
did his own version, you know. Candor and I like,
don't love Sinatra's version. They're like, he funked up all
the lyrics. But yeah, right, yeah he did it uh
seventy seven after a number one you just said twice, right, Yeah,

(01:25:38):
Scorsese did it in in uh seventy six or seventy seven,
right after The Driver, and it it was almost like
it's his version of I Love Well I'm interested only
because that's his apocalypse now as far as how it
nearly destroyed him, Like he almost didn't make Raising Bull

(01:25:59):
because he was almost driven to the brink of suicide
because of this film. I'm gonna bring up The Whiz
one more time. Um, there's a I mean, any director
like you read making movies by Sydney Lamette. Sidney LaVette
made Cervico and All Day Afternoon and directed The Whiz.
Um And it's one of the few times he cops

(01:26:21):
to a mistake in the book. All he says is,
I felt the look of the movie getting away from me.
I felt like a distance between what I'm pictured and
what my different departments were making and when they were
doing the the Emerald City sequence, and you know it's
those beautiful dancers and like the colors change and then

(01:26:42):
all the change like the footage because the gel was
so hot that it like like blew out the exposure. Um.
So it was sort of Um, I mean, you will
never get a better cast again in the history of
movies than the cast of The Whiz. But I'm all
I got selfish, plug and the news like you can't

(01:27:02):
win is not in the stage show you can't win.
I mean, it's not in the state that you don't
remember home? Is that what we remember? The home was
the home. But I'm just saying, I mean, you've as
like a two year old singing. Yeah, I mean a

(01:27:22):
lot of new songs. Well, in the Quincy and the
Unheard Quincy episode, he did six new songs for the
Ways that you know, That's why he was up all
night righting them. You know, he's writing them joints on
the spot. That that that Emerald Charlie Smalls who wrote
most of the music I'm telling about the songs that

(01:27:44):
weren't Charlie involved, like but his name. He was literally
flying by the seat of his pants, like writing stuff
three days before they were due on set in the
quastn't have the ship ready and like they were kind
of winging it. Yeah, I canna imagine that. Yeah, you
know what, how do I how do you between just

(01:28:09):
you know, being you know, playwright, actor, uh, you know,
MC songwriter? Like, how do I have I try to
go by two criteria? One am I gonna learn from
this thing that I could? Like I A was think
of the Divide Technical School commercial coal like that tool

(01:28:34):
it goes in your toolbox, like you learn each tool
one at a time, and that's how it worked. So
like that's how I like. It's like, Okay, I'm gonna
you know, Mary Poppins returns. I was not a big
Mary Poppins guy, but I'm gonna watch the director of
Chicago Directive musical like and I'm gonna learn from watching
him do that, and that's gonna help me for the
next thing. And then the other ship is just like stuff,

(01:28:54):
I kicked myself forever if I said no, like duck
tails do a voice gizmo duck on Duck. He was like, yeah,
I if I say no, I'm gonna hate the person
who did it forever, Like I'm enthusiasm experience. That's an
example of like I kicked myself forever. Yes, please tell me.
What you have to know is that not a word

(01:29:16):
of it dialogue is written. I do know this. But
he has the whole season like and he calls you
like he's like they're like Larry David wants to talk
to you, and you go, oh my god, And so
he calls you and he pitches you. The whole season goes.
You know, I don't know if you know the show,
but there was a fox on me and I'm gonna
I'm gonna figure, I'm gonna lift the foxwell because I'm

(01:29:36):
gonna help a guy cut the line and like I'm
gonna say he was here before and because of that,
he's gonna cut the and I'm gonna Okay, So can
I go on with thought while the musical and the
people in charge of the fount say you can do fount?
Why the musical? But only if Littman while Miranda's involved.
Oh Hamilton, we love Hamilton, Yes, yes, we love Hamilton's
And then like you're involved, but like we don't get
along and like you're painting the acid. We don't like

(01:29:58):
each other. And then somehow how we're gonna get to
like a duel and I'm gonna shoot you with a
paintball gun like it was all on the phone, and
like how fun to that you don't and there's no script,
like there's no there's no script. And so I told him, um,
I have to do that with you. Um, but I'm

(01:30:21):
about to leave the country. For eight months I was
doing um, I was doing Mary Poppin's Returns. And so
he said, they let me film in whenever I want,
so we'll work around you. So I filmed my stuff
for the first episode, like the weekend I was in
town for the Oscars. I filmed all the office ship
and then they like broke until I got back, and
then they reassembled the crew filmed my scenes. And again,

(01:30:43):
because she has such cashe and HBO, he just goes,
I got an idea, and they're like, all right, we're
doing another season. Like what's amazing? Is he really like
has he's a genius because he's created a system where
he doesn't have to learn online, but he can create
a whole season and TV like Jeff Schaefer, who's his

(01:31:04):
number two, who's sort of the show runner, has these
pieces of paper. He's kind of keeping track of the
plot lines and some like there would be times when
he'd come in and be like, all right, remember in
this scene, you've just come from your cousin's uh and
and and Larry would just shoo him away, like we'll
figure out, we'll figure it out. He's like, I don't
like knowing too much stuff. We'll get there, and he

(01:31:24):
just wants to get there organically. He doesn't want to
have to remember ship. There's no curb, there's no no,
it's Jeff Schaefer and and uh and Larry Da Like
Larry David gets an idea and he worked with this
show runner and they kind of work out the beats
and they schedule it by episode what they want to happen,

(01:31:45):
but not a line of dialogue. And it was funny
because then you also have to figure out your own
relationship to Larry. So like I figured, like, all right,
I can't be Nina Esthman because no one curses out
Larry like Nina Esthman. And I can't be the hype
guy because like Jabs Moved is a legit genius um
and I can't do what he does. So I was like,

(01:32:07):
I'll be the antagonist, but I'm just gonna be like
really positive while I do the opposite of whatever he
wants me to do. Like that was my whole thing.
Was like like the shirt Ry and be like yeah,
I like it, Okay, Okay, we need to look at
more shirts, Like just do the opposite to him, because
he knows how to deal with aggressive, but he doesn't

(01:32:28):
know how to deal with like passive aggressive. Positivity is
the opposite of what he wants. So That was my
way of being an a thank you, have you have
you planned? Uh, at least that you can talk about.
I guess the white elephant in the room is people
are dying to know what your next Broadway venture will be,

(01:32:53):
which you know again is you know, I assume that
this time is sort of like what was to Michael
j accident if you joke. But there's lessons in that, right,
Like I think there's stuff in Bad that I love,
Like Dangerous is legit my favorite album because I was
twelve when it came out, and the music that comes

(01:33:15):
out of the twelve is what means the most to
you forever. Um. I remember being in the mirror being
like um and just trials and my obsessions like yes, um,
but the thing but the thing is, let me wait, wait,
let me know some like artists, I think one of

(01:33:38):
the dangers is to go bigger, Like there's a temptation
to be like this one's gonna be even like if
you go to the like topping yourself place like that's
where I think people mess up and and so like
I'm not gonna write like a three act historical musical
like have hit that times a day on Twitter every day,

(01:34:05):
every day, Can you please write something about this so
people finally know. I was like, I think people know.
It's just a matter of what side. People don't care.
The thing is, though, most artists will do what they
call the departure album, which is like the opposite of that.
I was actually gonna say I kind of admire Mike's

(01:34:27):
balls for actually saying you know what at the top thriller, like, yeah,
he's literally the only one that had a mountain. Was like,
all right, I'm gonna climb this other mountain, which I
gotta give it to him. Okay, five albums, five number
one songs from an album is not a failure to
men in the mirror. Leave Me Alone, just wasn't on

(01:34:50):
the cassette. But what I'm saying is jam bad. Though yeah,
it's it's weird. It's a success, but it's still not
my favorite. But what I'm thing is that people either like,
we'll do the opposite or they'll try to top it.
But there's also a middle ground, and people never explore

(01:35:11):
the middle ground. I guess for you, what would the
opposite of Hamilton's be, like One Man Play or or
Shakespeare in the Park, or you know, one of my
favorite books, like I'm going to write a play for
every decade. Oh god, I wish um no. The one

(01:35:36):
of my favorite books in high school was because I
remember I was like a filmed guy. Was Rebel Without
a Crew by Robert Rodriguez, who directed Desperado and directed
The City, and his whole thing is like he made
his first movie for eight thousand dollars. He knacks out
all these credit cards, sold his blood and was like
a lab rat in like like experiments to make the money. Yeah,

(01:36:00):
clinical tr clinical trials, like that's how he made for
his first movie. And he shot and he did a
Maria on eight thousand dollars. And so he wrote this
book about like stop waiting for Hollywood, just make your
own ship. Like that was really influential to me, Like
stop waiting for anybody, make your own ship. And he said,
after I made Desperado, everyone was waiting for the sophomore slump,

(01:36:23):
and everyone was waiting for the sophomore slump. So just
do so much different ship than no one knows what
your sophomore project is like that, and that's basically what
I've been trying to do. Like he did a segment
for four rooms. Remember four Rooms. Yeah, episode for like
a show on Showtime, Like he just did like lots
of different Ship, and that's kind of like I was like, Okay,

(01:36:46):
I'm not gonna go right into writing another musical after Hamilton's.
I'm just gonna go do lots of different ship until
I a mass enough ideas. And I have ideas for
stuff I want to write that is the length of Hamilton's,
but it doesn't tell me what form it wants to be.
Like remember I thought Hamilton's gonna be a mixtape. Like
I thought I was gonna be doing like a Prince
among Thieves, Like That's what was in my head was

(01:37:09):
like it was a concept album. I'd have rappers play
the founders. I just didn't know any rappers yet, Like
I had to write the show to get there. Um,
and so I have I have ideas for full length things,
but I don't know whether their movies, or whether their
concept albums, or whether their shows. But there's because you
know rappers now, So that whole concept album thing is
like a thing. It can't of course, it can't be

(01:37:31):
hambled him, but it can be so yeah, and yeah,
so I have an idea for something that I think
could be a concept album and could be a play.
But until I start like really writing it, I'm not
gonna know what it is. It will tell me what
it is, all right. So you're just playing e seeds, okay,
the fun stuff? Gun to your head? What are the

(01:37:52):
five albums? And they can't know greatest hits? Man? Okay,
that's why I hate that Rolling Stones list. It's like,
come on, you can't James Star Time in there. That's
every James Brown record right, gun to your head. Five
records that you are forced to listen to in solitary

(01:38:16):
confinement four years straight. Five records for Neon Wesley University
professor Neon my college highlights. Yeah, um, bizarre Right to
the far Side. Yes, yes, I probably listened to that

(01:38:37):
more than any other. I'm team lab Cabin. I think
me and just Blaze might be the only two dudes. Yes,
I was eight, Yes, seventy eight. Motherfucker's so contrary, man,
can man theory about that? Seventy three to seventy eight.

(01:39:00):
The reason you're also contrary is because your formative Star
Wars movies, Empire strikes back and it is the one
with the sad ending and it taught a generation like
it's not just imagine seeing Empire strikes back and being
like and that's the end of the movie was about

(01:39:21):
the same. But that's not I've never seen star. Most contrary,
seventy eight people more return to Jedi, but I know
Fante has added it regardless, so I can see bizarre, right,
because I feel like that's the album that birth Eminem.
That's what I told you, what m M all right?
I mean number two inside, that's that's Eminem all day.

(01:39:45):
Everything's ok. If that album drops and you're fourteen years
old and you hear passing me by and what and
the remix the letter and number one official the burp, right,
I mean, just like it's album. Um, I'm work with

(01:40:10):
lad Cat too. It's just that album was like this
much real estate in my brain. Um, I just I
don't like records that I learned early pipe. We almost
we almost made a mistake on ill adult what we
were going to do, like industry complaint songs. The industry,
Oh yeah, industry complaint songs. And my A and R

(01:40:32):
is like no, like no one cares that the record
label doesn't care about Girls of Fame album, right, that
was like the record label, and I learned early. Never
made songs about the record label, so I learned early.
You know, alright, Number two, what's your number? Two? Number

(01:40:54):
two is an album that I remember more as like
a vinyl in my dad's collection. It's a Ruby Blades's
album called Buscando America looking for America, um, and it was.
It's it's one of those moments where like, you know,
you just you dance to your parents ship when you're kids,
like I got with them dancing dancing, and then you
listen and then like you learn enough Spanish to understand

(01:41:15):
the lyrics, and you go, this isn't about capitalism or
like this is about the perils of love, like religious fanaticism.
Like there's deep ship in the lyrics of those songs.
But I experienced it as like a kid dancing to it,
and then I had a whole other like thing when
I was old enough to appreciate it. Um. So that's

(01:41:36):
an album I can work with forever. That's not all
the kids that don't relate him to the guy from
the Predator movies Predator to with Danny Glover, Yes, and
then another generation which just knows it was a guy
on the Walking Dead sequel, and well, yes he is.
He's the father. Oh my god, yes, and he's like

(01:41:57):
he's like a bomb villa and then like kids know
him as predator to who he really was. But that's
some New York ship. But anyway, Yeah, that's the New
York show because he was, Yeah, he was. He was
the seventies sun Sign. He wrote all the best songs
of sun Sign the seventies. Um, him and Willie three.

(01:42:18):
I gotta pick up Theater album at some point, right,
But I've listened to Rent so many times. I don't
think I would. I would stay in it. It would
probably be it probably would be something I don't know
as well, like Groce Wind's Poorty in best or or
like any sometimes show like those are so fucking dense
you you will hear new ship in it every time.
Listening to some time like Arrangement wise is like listening

(01:42:42):
to pun lyrically, like you will get a new ship
every time you're here. Um, so probably like Sweeney Todd.
I think Sweeney Todd is a good number three and
it's also two disc so I'm kind of cheating. Um
do you play Lynn and you talk about like just
composition do you play keys or piano just well enough
to write my ship? And atually, Um, when I started

(01:43:02):
working with Bill will appreciate this, Like it used to
be like four tracks, Like I would play the bass
here and the piano here, and it was like terrible.
And then finally, like most of Heights got written a
garage band and Hamilton got written. The logic like I
just like anything, that's the distance between my brain and
like these keys, and to the point where it's part
of the editing process, like a melody has to survive

(01:43:24):
my shitty chops, right, That's that's there's melody through the
rough stages. Then you got some yeah. Yeah, there are
composers who have no distance between their brain and their hands.
I'm I'm just not one of those guys. It's got
to survive my chops. And then sometimes I find ship
along the way while I'm trying to get it out

(01:43:46):
of my head. Um uh okay, number four um songs
in the Key Life. I could listen to that forever
and be very very happy. Um. I couldn't pick any Stevie,
I could pick intervisions like you know, like we were
talking to on Twitter about like that. I think like
talking about being better than songs, and I was like,

(01:44:06):
I'm not mad. I think I played. I played talking
about more. I mean, songs is a masterpiece, but talking
about that kind of come back to more two discs.
So I'm cheating, all right. I'm just trying to get
more music into this little desert island situation you've got
me into. That's where I picked the least liked one,
which is, oh, it's like plants plants that I thought

(01:44:30):
he was gonna say because arts. Well, if I'm stuck
with the record for a year, Ian, I don't know.
I just haven't been here a question. Why hasn't there
been a great Stevie jukebox musical. I've imagined it many times,
like you started, yeah yeah, and like you enter the world, okay,

(01:44:53):
and then oh yeah, we can talk about that af
sort of like the Prince physical right, trust me music.
I'm telling one day, alright, last one, my last one.

(01:45:17):
I think you say some pun record at this point.
I mean I still funk with capital punishment, like it's
the one that's everything else after it's sort of like
hell yeah, baby, yo, you know what Spotify playlist? My

(01:45:38):
Spotify playlist, I don't know why. I First of all,
I love I love. I should not love that nigga ship,
but I love it. I love. I'm laughing at you now.
I don't even actually you Now. There's like five songs

(01:46:03):
that I really really really this on the year baby baby, Yeah,
there's five joints I really like. I like the sketches.
My favorite, my favorite part of the sketches, and I
know he was doing scar face was when the guys
laughing during the shooting scene like thanks, Punning, and he's
like when he gets shot, exactly exactly you you appreciate

(01:46:32):
this Lynn Pun, well not really. Pun was supposed to
be on adrenaline on things fall apart, what somewhere Um.
He was like, it's just the conversation with Pun. To

(01:46:53):
talk to him, it's another language, because he'll he'll call
the studio like I'm gonna, hey, what's upthing are you doing?
What's six o'clock? It's like talking talking to the Charlie
Brown teacher. That's how it is to talk to Big
Pun like he he was on his adrenaline. Should have

(01:47:16):
been a uh four man operation with Pun, Beanie Trek
and Malik and Pun uh, but he never made it.
So you've seen that footage of it's like pun d

(01:47:36):
m X and they're all sitting in that booth and
they're daring each other to freestyle and like at she's like,
no writtens, no writtens. It's a great little video. Oh yeah, yeah,
and let some ship. He definitely spit on someone else's
album and it's fantastic. Yeah yeah, we forgot oh um

(01:47:57):
your spot in the Gods. Watch to the Walterson micadoo.
Oh yeah yeah. Kind of its explained to us and
kind of tell, you know, our viewers what Walter Micado
met to the what what he means to the Latino communities.
The way I try to explain it to like Americans

(01:48:18):
who didn't grow with Walter mccado is like, imagine Bob
Ross told you your future. Like imagine Bob Ross came
into your home each day and was like, fergo, it's
gonna be okay, you have a fortune coming down the lane.
And then it's like Pisces and so like I remember
post because remembering into a room being loud and my

(01:48:40):
grandmother being like up waiting for Sagittarius, like waiting for
Walter mccado to tell her what was gonna happen her day,
and I would sit through Sagittarius because Capricorn was after
that and was readio personality. No, he was a TV
personal person Also, remember Bob imagine Bob Ross tells you
your horoscope and he dresses Lie Literaci when he's feeling spicy,

(01:49:03):
dresses like Tammy. Yeah, he was incredibly flamboyant at a time,
you know, like machismo in Latin culture is like off
the charts talks sometimes. But because Walter was so positive
and he told us our future, he was just a fixture.
So like remember I never knew his name. My Christmas

(01:49:24):
present every year to my grandmother was the almanac Walter
Melcaldo like next year Almanac to tell her what she
could expect in the coming year. And one of the
producers of the doc is Friends with foot Cars, who's
in Freestyle of Supreme with us. So I got a
text Froot Carsh being like, hey, would you be interested
in being in Walter Melcals When I wrote yes, I

(01:49:46):
didn't let him finish because I got a chance to
meet him. I could feel my ancestors doing backflips that
I was meeting the guy who told them their future.
Every day, and I feel really grateful. I was. I
was doing Hamilton Pudrico at the time, so I got
like an afternoon with him. He read me my chart,
he read me my kids charts, like he like looked

(01:50:07):
up my birthday and was like, oh, well, this was
happening in this movie, and this is happen like of
course you were going to go into writing like I
was like crying so much. It's not in the movie
of me, just like, holy shit. Um. And then he
passed away like within the year. So I felt I
feel extra grateful for that moment because it was like,

(01:50:28):
you know, that was that was like that's as close
as I've gotten to like meeting a celebrity that was
on my TV every day. That was a great documentary. Man,
you know, he knew who he was. I didn't know
his story, and I thought that was really good. I
think I got to look then got a couple because
I still got a y s himpor Louise too. So
it's well, that's coming out on Tuesday. That's not out yet,

(01:50:50):
oh god, okay, okay, but it'll be out by the
by the time this episode place. Yes. And then there's
the Freestyle Dog, which question is in and uh is like,
what's crazy about that? Is they got footage of us
at our peak, like at Big Bean's era, substitute teaching,
Like the guy who directed that movie started following us

(01:51:11):
with a camera in two thousand five. So this movie
is about you guys at our beginnings. It's about like
the fifteen years of freestyle when like we were, I
was a substitute teacher, bills working MTV, and then we
were making up funny raps for people. It's where that's
how Hulu, how do you stay sharp? Because I now

(01:51:35):
realized one of the things about being in quarantining is
that us doing the Tonight Show every night, at least
when we were doing it before quarantining, I mean to
spending two hours every day rapping, so that keeps his
mind sharp, which explains like the amount of fire that

(01:51:57):
he's which is my album is probably that ten minute
freestyle because I've watched that more times than any album,
any album of the past few years. So how do
you say, Because the thing is as a freestyler, you're like,
you're super warm point, I've never seen you fall or
slip yet, and in doing freestyle love supreme. The amount

(01:52:20):
of times I've seen it, Like the amount of pressure
that it takes to make that happen. Like how often
every day are you guys, especially now in quarantining, Like
how often every day you guys even practicing? When the
quarantine happened, we were doing our Broadway running. We were
doing an h a week and that was incredible. I

(01:52:41):
wasn't doing h O. I was doing two or three
a week, but still that was enough. Um My, my
learning curve with freestyle was, oh, if you try to
plan your rhymes, you're gonna fall the funk on your face.
Like I that's that. That was my learning curve because
when we started doing it, I was trying to be
cute and I was like, all right, I got to
punch lines that if if if I can't think of anything,

(01:53:03):
I'll say these funny punch lines. And then like I
would get out on stage, I would funk up the
punch lines and then be terrible and like and so
you learn the only answers to just be truly open
and truly present, and then like you get enough reps
that like it becomes another language filter, like oh no,
everything I'm gonna say is gonna rhyme but I'm gonna

(01:53:24):
express this. I'm gonna express this, and it will just
rhyme because I've had enough reps and I know how
to do it um. And if you get like chess,
enough on it, you can know where you're going and
build your way there, which to Reks amazing at every
time we play Wheel of Freestyle, I love hearing what
his first line is because I already know he knows
what his last line is, and he's building to it,

(01:53:46):
and he builds backwards. He builds backwards, but he builds
backwards in real time. And that's what I try to
do too, of Like I'm gonna end on dinosaurs, so
now I got to think of three rounds for dinosaurs,
and I gotta do it as I go um. And
he's the best in the world, all at it um.
But that's that's what I try to do in the shows,
and that's my own little discipline for myself. Like Anthony

(01:54:07):
were literally build to rhyme and say the opposite just
to sprits himself. I don't think Anthony's rhyme three times,
uh Like he just likes to fucking zig and zag.
Foot cars is like U t K is just like
he hits these pockets, were like he's got twenty syllables
and then he can't. Like everyone kind of approaches it differently,
which I think also works well. Like my technique wouldn't

(01:54:31):
work for Anthony and U t k is wouldn't work
for me. But we all kind of meet in the
middle because we're all just trying to be present and
listen to each other and like say what comes out right? Yeah,
I think like freestyle and for m c s that's
like DJ and for producers, like I think just being
in that coming up in there, if you came up

(01:54:52):
in battle culture or like cipher culture, like freestyling, that definitely. Um.
You know when you talk about earlier, you were saying
they don't really teach rapping his songwriting or they don't
think of it as songwriting. Um, that's something that's always
kind of been a thing for me. And just that
your I tell I tell all m c s. Anybody
want to wrap for me whatever? Like I'm like, no,
please don't wrap for me. I don't hear it. But

(01:55:13):
you got four bars to close me? Like that's my home,
you got you got four bars to close me? I
know I can deal within four bars if somebody really
got some shit or not, because you gotta you have
to pretty much a you know, grab the listen about
the throat in that beginning, and you gotta cloth strong,
you know what I mean. And the middle you can,
you know, the middle gotta be strong too. But that opening,

(01:55:33):
that closing, like you gotta bring that mother at home. Lynn.
I just want to ask you. It's interesting because we
were talking about like, as you're growing, your father is growing,
and we know that this documentary is coming out about
his life, and it's interesting because it's it's it's an
interesting responsibility put on your shoulders. It feels like at
this time in your life as a new Eurekan man,

(01:55:53):
as a Puerto Rican man, same thing with this. It's
like an activism versus capitalism kind of line. Like I
just wanted you to speak on it for a second
and speak on this weight that has kind of been
thrusted upon you and you've taken on a lot voluntarily
in that sense. You know, I used to use Twitter
to just like live tweet Buffy and ship like everybody
else on Twitter. Like you can't do that when you

(01:56:15):
have three million people following you. It's a particle, like
every tweets a press release, Um, so your relationship to
that changes. But also like I try to treat the
causes I get involved in the same way I treat
creative impulses of like what's the ship that doesn't leave
you alone? Like, what is the thing that like you

(01:56:36):
went to bed thinking about it and you woke up
and You're like, this is so fucked up. I can't
stop thinking about it. It hurts my heart, it hurts
my stomach, Like I'm gonna get involved in some way.
And I tried, because you could go onto it all
day and see all the things going on in the
world and drown in it, like and drown in how
much need there is in the world, But you can
only listen to the ship that doesn't leave you alone,

(01:56:58):
And so I try to. I try to do that.
And then I think the biggest lesson I got from
my dad because I'm the mellowest, laziest guy in my
family by a lot, But the media is so high
because my dad is such an overachiever that like, even
falling below the media, and I still get a lot
of you done, yeah, but I am I'm the slow poke.

(01:57:19):
I'm the one who like, like, I just want you know,
I'm very happy that we have all successfully skipped watching
this first debate live and let's talk about it. Let's
talk about it. Listen, I'm about to the DV here.
I don't know what you're saying. It's an addiction. So yeah,
I can't. I can't. I want to date with you guys. Yeah,

(01:57:40):
I'm not gonna be like, you know, this guy's got
some good ideas. But the pressure is on because everybody's
pandering to the Latin boat, which I found it's so
interesting because there's so many countries that you just put
under an umbrella with different classes and ship. But like,
even with that, for you, it's even pressure in this
election year in a way, right for you to speak
up say things where do we you know? Yeah, but

(01:58:02):
but the thing that my dad and I were always
on about is like that we're not a monolith and
you have to talk with Nuance. Don't be playing mid
Angay and the fucking Texas for Biden things like they're
fucking with Nathaniel music down, you know, like got me,
But it's um, it's it's it's as simple as speaking

(01:58:24):
to our issues and speaking like and and really understanding
them and the um, you know the fact that we
we've never had a president more hostile to that you
knows than this president. And he told us who he
was the moment he came down the elevator and it
was like Mexicans a rapist. They're not sending over the
best people like they're sending over the rapists and killers,

(01:58:44):
like and like the Trump And it went downhill from there,
like that was his opening salvo and it went downhill
from there. So, um, you know, I think, I mean,
if you want to go down policies, we're talking another hour,
but like are but I don't have to. You have
to just you know, speak to the issues that that

(01:59:04):
that affect us. This motherfucker through paper towels and did
everything he could not to send aid to Puerto Rico.
And what he did to Puerto Rico, Marie has exactly
what he's doing to this country in this pandemic. He
wasn't committee and then he lied about how not ready
he was. Okay, happened our island and then it happened
in our country. You opened the door, And I guess
I have to ask one question. Every you know, every

(01:59:27):
culture has their group of people that are willingly ignorant
to actual facts and truth. How easy do you think
it will be to convince? As Layah mentioned, uh, there's
a a sizeable population of Latinos for Trump, uh that

(01:59:52):
you know, feel as though he's right and he speaks
for me. And I'm actually shocked that a lot in
what my hip hop e I would expect it from,
you know, the the old uncle that you think about
at Thanksgiving or at least that you know, comedians joke about.
But is this at all? Is this something that could

(02:00:12):
be turned around or in your much of it is
just misinformation. You're trying to play fair with someone who
lies as easy as breathing, and the fact that he
throws around words like socialism and they're coming to get

(02:00:33):
your this are coming to get your That Sometimes, to
populations that have fled countries where that real ship has happened,
lies can take root, you know. I mean, like there's
all manner of atrocities happening in in cert Latin American
countries here, and if Trump says they're gonna do that
here and you've just come from there, that ship takes root.

(02:00:55):
And I really think that misinformation is a big part
of it, and the fact that um in Spanish language,
like misinformation can spread even more wildly because like you know,
the fact checkers of the Washington Post aren't listening to
the Latin radio station, but the Latin radio station is
spouting some right conspiracy. It goes unchecked. It just straight

(02:01:20):
up goes unchecked. And so you know, to me, that's
a big part of it, is just like misinformation campaigns
with vulnerable populations, UM and UM. You know, the larger
part of it I can't speak to, Like there's you know,
I can't know what goes on in that mindset because
I'm certainly not of that mindset. Like I'm just seeing

(02:01:42):
with my own eyes the lies this guy is told,
Like with Puerto Rico alone, like he said only sixteen
people died. We know that things to mismanagement. It was
closer to four thousand, but he got stuck at sixteen
and kept it moving. You just released the funds like
a week ago, right, right, right type of the election, right,
and when when you see him with this, with the

(02:02:04):
pandemic stuff, and how unprepared he was and how much
he downplayed it. He will continue to say, but China,
but China, but like it's like he gets the one
fact in his head and he sticks to it. Um.
So you know, I don't know the answer to turning around,
but I know that misinformation is a big part of it.
Misinformation that is just sticky enough to take hold. My

(02:02:24):
last question, I'm paid bill. Uh is there anything about
Lynn that we haven't learned yet? Ending with you, fella Cootstein,
I just saw that you replaced the name. I mean,
there are many stories about Lynd that are fantastic, and uh,

(02:02:46):
you know, uh, maybe we could do a second episode
and get into the real men o um, I mean
that Yeah, No, what don't you just say? That was
a word sallenge? God made fun of how you talk?
But what did you just say? I don't know how

(02:03:07):
to answer this question. The answer is, yes, there are
many stories about Linda that I can tell here, but uh,
there are none that will take this short amount of
time we have left to coagulate nothing, not for y'all
have been been homies for all these years, you know,
like twenty years. For y'all to still be homies and

(02:03:27):
still working together, and you know the heights that you've
both achieved. I think that's just a great story man,
it's a plan for this forever. Ever answer that question
like you for you's only three years. Only two people
in my life not related to me that I've known longer.
You're actually one of them, which is serious kids today, goodbye?

(02:04:01):
He did you really? Did you have a comdo? Oh? Yeah,
I Comedo six Jupiter Lad. I used to watch Lynn
play Tony Hawk's gate Boarder for like hours upon the
remasters over again. We used to watch Little Mermaid. We
have It's a lot of weird times. Burnout Combinator. That
was a big game. Do you do you still game?

(02:04:22):
You still game it all in? Yeah? I just got
the remastered Tony Hawk because that was that was the
game that got me back into games. Like we started
playing with that in college and then I never got
off again. I'm replaying Red Dead too, like that's like
and I never opened it was just this so much game.
I finished game. But once you start hunting there it's

(02:04:42):
like ups four U Xbox um PS four upskay MPs
four two. I just finished a couple of five months ago.
U Ghost of Tsushima. Uh, that ship is amazing game.
My wife likes like she plays Zelda forever. She will
every book in the room, Like I just want to fight.

(02:05:04):
I just want to fight. I can still go okay
if you just want to fight. Ship. There is a
games four. It's like twenty bucks. It was on Xbox,
but now they made its four called cup Head, cup Head.
Cud Dude, dude, I'm getting a head. It is like
I heard I like I saw somebody in the form.
They described it as cartoon Dark Souls, and it is

(02:05:26):
the really ship ever like it is. It's hard as fun,
it's super hard, but the and the animation style isn't
like that nineteen thirties Tom and Jerry. My first date
with my wife was Grand Theft Auto San Andres. That's
how I got to come to my house to play
that with what I used to play, Burnout Revenge. I
used to watch them crash cars for like hours and hours.

(02:05:51):
I don't think none of Yeah, man, ladies and gentlemen,
you asked for it, you got it. The four years
Red Lynn Manuel Miranda episode of Quest Love Supreme. We
thank you very much for joining us. I wanna behalf
of Team Supreme. Uh Layah Sugar, Steve Fan Tacolo and

(02:06:13):
Bill's Bills Bills. It's the best name ever. Please call
there you go boy? All right this question Love signing off.
We will see you next go around. Thank you very much, Lynn,
We appreciate quest. Love Supreme is a production of my

(02:06:39):
Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, this
is the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.

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