I literally know nothing about the musical Wicked but do find it very full circle that one of Ariana Grande’s first featured songs was Popular Song by Mika and now she’ll be singing Popular Song in the Wicked musical.

My controversial musical theatre movie moment is that I could have done with one less Lin Manuel Miranda cameo in In The Heights.

Some photos from the world premiere of In the Heights

Lin discusses the songs discarded and then revived in the Heights movie (spoilers!) and Jon shares what it’s like to have Lin message you songs

The Cast and Crew of In The Heights Talk Music, Miracles and Merengue

Melissa Barrera: I was inside the bodega waiting for my cue. The bodega was not operating because we had taken over, but people just kept coming in to shop. I’d say, “Oh, I’m not working right now,” and they’re like, “Oh, well, can I just grab something?” I was like, “I’m sure it’s all props, or the production will pay for it. Just grab whatever you need, but we’re shooting.” They would shop, and I’d just say, “Thank you so much for coming.”

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Mitchell Travers, Costume Designer: Oftentimes I would just pick a corner and people watch, letting certain real-life outfits on the street inspire the outfits I would put on camera. One day while filming, a real-life abuela (grandma) walked by wearing the exact same dress our abuela wears in the film!

Jon M. Chu, Director: The neighbors treat you like family, and they share with you. They yell at you like family too, if you’re in their parking spot. I even brought my mom [to set] one day, and by the time I came back, she was having drinks with the neighbors.

Lin-Manuel Miranda: You know, there is the nightmare Hollywood version of this where it looks like a telenovela and has nothing to do with this neighborhood. But we cast these incredible actors who have lived in authenticity, who don’t feel out of place next to our neighbors on 175th Street.

Jon M. Chu: Every day, we knew the responsibility to share, as truthfully as we could, what it felt like to have family and community there. Even down to the food and the sauces. One of the actors would say, “Oh, you know what, they wouldn’t have these sauces here,” and someone would bring sauce from home, so we put that bottle on the table. It was a constant conversation to make it as truthful as possible.

Lin-Manuel Miranda: In The Heights exists because in so much of the entertainment world, particularly in musical theater, Latinos are invisible, and so, my mandate, my dare to myself when I started writing this with Quiara [Alegría Hudes, co-writer], was to put us on the map and tell the stories I wasn’t seeing [in the media].

Anthony Ramos: [A 2012 touring production of] In The Heights was the first time I had a lead role in anything. It was a principal role where I got my union card, which then allowed me to audition for Hamilton,which is how I met Lin. In The Heights set it off for Latinos, and now, hopefully, the movie can be that.

Lin-Manuel Miranda: I think the most autobiographical lyric in this whole movie for me is, “I used to think we lived at the top of the world when the world was just a subway map.” That was true for me. When you watch movies about New York, or you look at a tourist map, they hardly go above 96th Street. That used to drive me crazy growing up, because I grew up at the top of the A train, and I just loved my neighborhood.

There’s something about Washington Heights that just is undefeatable. It’s historically been an immigrant neighborhood. When I was growing up, it was a largely Dominican neighborhood. Before that, it was a Puerto Rican neighborhood and Cuban neighborhood. Before that, it was an Italian neighborhood, an Irish neighborhood and Jewish neighborhood, but there’s a lot of first chapters in American life that begin in this neighborhood.It’s for strivers and it’s for survivors, and I’m really proud to call it home.

In the second half of this interview, Jon and Jimmy Smits tell the story of the filming of Carnval:

“I’m struck because I remember looking up and seeing Lin-Manuel…watching from a fire escape.”

“I call cut and no one stops dancing. They just keep going, they have their flags out, they’re jumping up and down…and Lin comes out on the fire escape and they all start chanting LIN! LIN! LIN! And he’s just starting to bawl and everyone’s starting to cry…because he manifested this. He couldn’t get a role for himself so he wrote himself a role, his community a role.”

In the Heights Is the Movie We All Need Right Now

When In the Heights premiered on Broadway in 2008, it became a guiding light for a generation of performers trying to find their way. “I must have watched it at least 15 times,” says Melissa Barrera of the four-time Tony-winning musical. “When I saw that show, I was like, ‘This is where I fit in on Broadway. These are people who look like me, who sound like me, who have names that sound like mine.’ ” The Mexican actress now costars in the show’s long-awaited feature film adaptation (in theaters and streaming on HBO Max on June 11) as Vanessa, an aspiring fashion designer yearning for a life outside of Washington Heights, the upper Manhattan neighborhood at the film’s center. Anthony Ramos, who stars as Usnavi, a bodega owner and neighborhood griot who, in between attempts to woo Vanessa, dreams of returning to the Dominican Republic, echoes the sentiment. “I didn’t know where I fit in on Broadway. I’m Latino, I’m from the hood in Brooklyn; people don’t even speak like me on Broadway. I ain’t gonna fit in on South Pacific. Who’s giving me a lead role on Broadway? [In the Heights] was like a beacon of hope for me.”

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Long before the sensation of Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda created In the Heights (and originated the role of Usnavi) out of necessity. “I started writing [the] show because I desperately wanted a life in musical theater, and I didn’t see that many opportunities for me or for Latinx performers,” says Miranda, who is now a producer on the film. “We had West Side Story, which was back in the ’50s, and not that much new since then on the stage. The show came out of an impulse to create more opportunities for Latinx performers.” Crucially important in bringing the show to the screen was representing the breadth of the Latinx population. “The thing we tried really hard to do was cast with the understanding that the Latinx community is not a monolith. We come in all shades,” Miranda says. “We are Afro-Latinos, and lighter-skinned Latinos, and Latin Americans, and Central Americans. So the diversity within the film company really represents the many flavors that our community comes in. We’re very proud of that.”

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For those involved in the production, the film’s decade-long delays to bring those conversations to the screen have ultimately been for the better. “I think in a year where we’ve all been locked down and reminded about what is important, to put out a film where we are able to celebrate community and togetherness is something that feels really relevant,” Miranda says. “Sometimes I shiver when I think about previous versions of this film that were possible, because I feel like every detour, every setback, and every challenge this film has faced over the 10-plus years it’s taken to make it to the screen—it’s only made the movie better. It clarified for us what we wanted out of a big-screen adaptation of In the Heights.” For Ramos, the time for In the Heights to keep shining its light is just right. “I hope kids around the world, in Colombia, Peru, Uruguay, Paraguay, all these places where they’ve never seen this before, can watch this movie and be like, ‘Damn, hold up. Maybe I can do that.’ Because I know that’s what [it] did for me.”

Lin-Manuel Miranda and director Jon M. Chu labored for years to bring “In the Heights,” an upbeat musical that opened on Broadway in 2008, to the big screen. After countless hours spent together in casting calls, on set in the bustling neighborhood of New York City’s Washington Heights and toiling in the editing bay, how well do they really know each other?

‘In the Heights’: Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jon M. Chu on the Hard Fight to Turn the Groundbreaking Musical Into a Movie

When Lin-Manuel Miranda was pitching his musical “In the Heights” nearly two decades ago, Broadway heavyweights stumbled over what he was selling. They wanted the young female protagonist Nina, who drops out of Stanford, to have a more dramatic reason for leaving school than the pressures of being the first in her family to go to college.

“I would get pitches from producers who only had ‘West Side Story’ in their cultural memory,” Miranda recalls. “Like, ‘Why isn’t she pregnant? Why isn’t she in a gang? Why isn’t she coming out of an abusive relationship at Stanford?’ Those are all actual things I was pitched.” He pauses for a moment, not to entertain those queries but to consider their absurdity. “Because the pressure of leaving your neighborhood to go to school is fucking enough. I promise. And if it’s not dramatic enough, that’s on us to show you the fucking stakes.”

Miranda stood his ground. The show that he wanted to create emerged from his memories of growing up in New York’s Washington Heights neighborhood and from the painful realization that Broadway roles for Latinos were limited. So he used hip-hop and salsa to pay homage to a close-knit community of immigrants and strivers, bodegas and block parties, friends who feel like family and families that deal with the tensions of trying to make it in the greatest city in the world. “In the Heights” would eventually open on Broadway in 2008, winning four Tonys and launching Miranda’s career.

Now, that musical is becoming a major summer film directed by Jon M. Chu. The Warner Bros. movie is finally coming out, both in theaters and on the streaming service HBO Max, on June 11. Even after a year’s delay due to the pandemic, the timing couldn’t be better.

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And that’s not just because Miranda no longer has to fight to reflect the experiences that have since resonated with countless college students who have felt like Nina. “Because of the specificity of that struggle, I can’t tell you how many people have made it their business to tell me how much it means to them,” Miranda says.

After a hellish year in which audiences have been stuck at home and unable to hug loved ones, “In the Heights” serves as a joyous snapshot of the life we lost and have been longing to resume. It’s a music-infused love letter to a unique corner of New York City, as well as an unabashed celebration of community and what it means to dream outside the lines. The characters have an uninhibited zest for life, dancing in the streets, across fire escapes and through city parks.

“This is a vaccine for your soul,” says Chu.

But getting to this point wasn’t easy. ”In the Heights,” a movie that Miranda had been trying to make since Obama was elected president, overcame many hurdles and headaches, and was nearly left for dead while its creator struggled to find the right partners to help him realize his vision.

Read the rest of this great article here!

In The Heights’ Lin-Manuel Miranda and cast break down new trailers and movie’s long journey to screens

It’s been three years since the In The Heights cast spent a summer in Washington Heights filming the big screen adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway hit. In all it’s been almost 20 years since Miranda first envisioned a musical that represented the world he grew up in. “No one was was writing parts for people like him, so he wrote them,” In The Heights’ film director Jon M. Chu (Crazy Rich Asians) told reporters this weekend ahead of the release of two new trailers. “No one was writing parts for his community, so he wrote them.”

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On adaption the beloved stage musical for the screen

Quiara Alegría Hudes: I want to take it as an opportunity for people who already know and love musical to discover even new things in it, as opposed to try to make the same experience. Keep the heart and soul and add to it, and go new and surprising places too, so that you can have an even deeper experience if you already know it.

Lin-Manuel Miranda: I have to say, Jon, I think, dreamed bigger than any of us in terms of the size and scope of this. We spent our summer [of 2018] on 175th St. and Autobahn. You know, he was committed to the authenticity of being in that neighborhood…. And then also, when it comes to the production numbers, dreaming so big, I mean this is a big movie musical. I think we’re so used to asking for less—just to ask to oscupy space, as Latinos. Like, let us make our little movie. And Jon, every step of the way, was like, ‘No. This is a big movie. These guys have big dreams. We’re allowed to go that big. And I’m just so thrilled with what he did because I think it’s bigger than any of us ever dreamed.

On the universality of the story

Lin-Manuel Miranda: When we’re first generation kids and we come from somewhere else, we always wonder what it would be like if our parents had stayed. You know, those questions of home being real personal. Like, what does home meant to me? And every character is sort of answering it in a different way. For some people, home is somewhere else. For some people, home is the block there. And so, you know, that’s that’s worth singing about. That’s worth celebrating in a movie this size.

Jon M Chu: I was so lucky to be invited into [Lin’s and Quiara’s] homes, literally—they’re all in Washington Heights. To meet the block, meet the people who they get their café con leche from, their piragua guy. All those things, I got to witness. And it reminded me, [as it did] when I saw the show on Broadway years and years ago, of my own upbringing—even though I was not from Washington Heights. I’m from the completely other side of the country, a Chinese family and a Chinese restaurant. I recognize all the love. I recognize the characters. I recognize the aunties and uncles who raise you and say, “I love you” by their food. And you have to decode everything that they’re putting on you from their own baggage, but then you have to pick up your own and make your own path. And I love that this story that they’ve created has no villain. It’s everyone’s internal struggle on the path they want to make to their future. And to me, that’s really what home is. This is not a destination. It’s the people around you on your journey, and everyone finds their own way and finds what home means to them in their own way. And all of that is okay.

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On writing the female characters in the film

Quiara Alegría Hudes: It’s so fun and so thrilling. You know, growing up, the beauty standard I saw in magazines did not reflect the beauty standards I saw in abuela’s living room on the block, which had all different body types, all different hair textures, all different skin tones. And we would just celebrate it. And you would own it, who you were. I was it was the plucking, and the spraying, and everything. And it was also about just the spirit of celebration as you were getting ready or getting dressed, and the fun of that. And so, the opportunity to really say, “Well, here’s another notion of beauty that’s more expansive, and here’s how we take up space as we’re getting ready for the day.”It was so fun.

On making Carla and Daniela’s relationship a romantic one for the film

Stephanie Beatriz: Quiara and Jon really expanded on what Lin and Quiara originally created, and now they’re partners–and not just work partners but they’re life partners. And what was so gratifying to me, as a person who is queer, is to see this relationship in the film be sort of just part of the fabric of their community, and be normal, and be happy and functioning, and just part of the quilt that they’ve all created.