- Have a seat.
(audience cheering) - Whoa!
(audience cheering) - They're very excited.
(audience cheering) - Whoa!
(audience continues cheering)
That has never happened.
(Lin-Manuel laughing)
In three seasons.
- Oh my goodness gracious. - Good gosh.
Does that happen just when you go to Target?
(Lin-Manual laughs)
- Like can you just walk in to get some supplies?
- Yeah, just in the electronics aisle.
- Oh my God! I'm like, that's crazy!
That's never happened here.
Like, and we've had some really big stars here,
I'm just saying,
like I'm like- - Thank you, guys, thank you.
I'm happy to see you. (audience cheering)
- But it is amazing.
It's so good to see you again, in person especially.
But it is amazing.
Your reach with people like,
everybody loves you and you're so inspiring
and you've inspired so many people
to do so many great projects.
But, speaking of in person, Broadway is back so-
- Broadway is back, y'all. - I know, it's so exciting.
(audience cheering)
I know!
They have to be excited,
everybody's been out of work, so there's that.
But also just the creativity,
I feel like that is like the lifeline of New York.
Like, it's the blood flow for me, at least as a Taurus.
- Yeah, we're all like Tinkerbell and Peter Pan
and we need applauds to live. (audience laughing)
- Yeah, yeah (laughs).
- And our cast members were waiting for a year and a half
to be back up on that stage.
And I gotta say, not only is "Hamilton" back,
it's never been a better time to see a Broadway show,
because even the long-running shows
have now had a rehearsal process.
They had to start from scratch
and put their shows back up again.
So I was at the reopening of "Phantom,"
a couple of weeks ago.
- Yeah. - And it was just like,
unbelievable!
- Wait, I heard that Andrew Lloyd Webber DJ'd after,
did you see that?
- Yeah, sure. Naturally.
- 'Cause I think that that's amazing.
- AL Dubs,
on the one and two's. (Kelly laughs)
When we left the show, yeah that's him, there he is!
(audience applauding)
DJ AL Dubs.
- So is it true that you...
I did this as well.
Did you perform at "Bar and Bar Mitzvah"?
- I did.
- I did as well.
- I didn't sing.
- Oh, I did.
- I was one of the people whose job it was
to just encourage kids and grandmas and aunties to dance.
Were you a life coach at parties?
- I was like, no! (Kelly laughs)
They'd say, "Wear a black silk shirt and black pants,
and, like, we'd pick you up in a van." (laughing)
It was 400 bucks a gig.
- Yeah.
- [Lin-Manual] Which was like, my rent.
- Which is amazing, yeah, it's good money.
- And you'd go and I was horrible at it,
'cause my job would be like,
"Hey, Rachel, hey, girls, like, wanna dance?"
(audience laughs) (Kelly laughs)
You know, and there were guys with me
who were really confident,
like, sorta good-looking, like Long Island guys,
who were like,
"Yeah, it's really cool, you dance,
sometimes the moms give you their number,
it's like really great."
- Oh, my gosh. - And I was like,
I am not made for this!
(audience laughs)
I am too nervous and introverted.
- Oh, my gosh.
- But it was, yeah, I left the last of my dignity
in a bar mitzvah in Long Island.
(audience laughs) - Oh.
- 20 years ago. - You know what though?
It all builds character.
That's what I'm saying,
- It does. - All the jobs.
I feel like it does, and the humility. (laughs)
But what do you remember about the first time
you were ever on stage in a musical?
Like your favorite one.
- I had the most amazing dosage of musical theater
at a young age because,
I had an amazing elementary school music teacher,
Barbara Aimes.
Shout out to Barbara Aimes.
- Get it, Barbara Aimes.
(audience cheering)
- She's actually in "Tick Tick Boom",
I put her in the movie.
- Oh I love that! - And she plays
Jonathan Larsen, the music teacher. (laughs)
- I love that.
- I had to.
I had to-
- I know but that's so great
like a little nugget so everybody knows that
like while watching it, that's so cool.
- Yeah, yeah.
And so, she would do something called the sixth grade play.
She would music direct and direct the sixth grade play,
and when I was in Kindergarten,
it was West Side Story,
and the whole school watched it.
And when I was in first grade,
it was "Fiddler On The Roof".
and so by the time you're in fifth grade,
you're like, "What's our sixth grade play gonna be?"
- Oh my God. - And,
by the time we got to sixth grade,
they ran out of age appropriate musicals,
for twelve year olds. (audience laughs)
So we did,
a very unauthorized previous six years worth of musicals,
like 20 minute versions.
So, when I was twelve years old-
- Wait, did you pick the best songs?
- Yeah, they just picked the best songs and were like,
"Here's a 20 minute Fiddler."
"Here's a 20 minute West Side."
- It's like a variety show of musicals, I love this.
- It was four hours long. (audience laughing)
Our poor parents. (audience laughing)
But-
- My God, all those parents hated all of you. (laughs)
- Hated us.
On our wooden chairs in our auditorium.
(kelly laughing)
But I played,
A farmer in Oklahoma,
Captain Hook,
Bernado in West Side Story,
- What?
- And I had to play a backup in "The Wiz".
(audience laughing)
And, who else?
A son in Fiddler.
It was like, just the most amazing experience of my life.
And when you're-
- What a bootcamp.
- When you're twelve and you play (faintly speaking)
and you sing and,
all the girls and boys have to faint, when you sing.
I was like, "I'm doing this."
I'm doing this. - I'm amazing.
- For the rest of my life. - I'm amazing. (laughs)
- (laughs) That's it. I'm done.
- I love that.
Well, that's a lot to ask.
That's a high bar to ask of sixth graders.
I like her, Barbara.
- Yeah, I don't remember any math, form six grade,
I remember the sixth grade play.
- I only remember FOIL, that's it, for math.
So anyway, you were a substitute teacher.
I didn't know that as well.
For some reason I missed that.
- Yeah.
My first job at a college was teaching,
seventh grade English at my old high school.
(audience applauding) - Wow.
- Yeah, it was amazing.
- What was your favorite thing to teach?
- My favorite thing to teach was Shakespeare.
We would teach, "Midsummer Night's Dream".
- And they were into it?
- Yeah, because the thing is,
Shakespeare is really boring when you have to read it,
but if you have to act it,
it's like, the best. - Oh, you were a cool teacher.
- I was kind of a cool teacher.
And I had a...
You know, everyone would pick their names out
who they were playing that day
and girls play boys,
and boys play girls, - Oh, see that's fun!
You acted out. - And in acting it out,
You understand it. - Yeah.
It's like English/Drama class.
I like it.
- It was really fun.
You know they offered my a full-time job
and I loved it.
I truly love teaching and so I could see
the Mr Holland's Opus version of my life,
of like, - I love that.
- I'll be here thirty years and I'll inspire a lot of kids
and I'll never finish my play.
And so I ran.
And so I basically was like,
"I can't teach full-time."
"I'm writing the show "In the Heights".
So I was a professional substitute teacher.
- Wow. (audience cheering)
- I was basically like a sub at my old high school,
until In the Heights
opened on Broadway. - But you bet on yourself.
You bet on yourself.
And your dream, that's cool. - I did.
And weirdly, my future brother in law
was one of my students.
- What? Your life is weird!
(audience laughing)
Wait, what?
- Yeah, he was still a junior when I was subbing,
and then when I started dating my wife, (laughs)
he turns to his sister and goes,
"You're dating Mr Miranda?"
"From school?" (Kelly laughing)
And now he's my brother.
(both laughing) (audience applauding)
- What a small world.
- Yeah.
- So you did the music for Encanto,
so what was your inspiration?
Why pick this one?
Why was this one inspiring?
- I had an amazing time
writing the songs for Moana.
- Oh my God! (audience cheering)
Thank you.
From a mom that loves to sing with her kids,
you did such a great job with that movie.
And I love singing the songs with them,
and you don't know the affect you have on families,
like that kind of stuff really ties us together and like,
it's a really cool bonding experience.
- Oh thank you. - So thank you.
- Thank you, yeah. - It's really cool.
- So I just...
I loved it and I was hired several years
into the development process on that.
And so I just said,
"For the next one, can I just please be there?"
"From the beginning, I wanna be as involved as I can be."
And so,
I got to be in on the ground floor
while we created this incredible family.
And I really wanted to just...
I wanted to be a part of a big, Latino,
Disney animated musical.
- I love it. (audience cheering)
- Look at this incredible, diverse, beautiful family.
- I love it. - And,
Yeah.
And just sort of write what I didn't see
when I was growing up and they're all so incredible.
- Did I hear that it's in English and Spanish, the songs?
- Yeah, yeah.
So I wrote two of the songs in Spanish and,
I kind of had to.
You know that's a little outside of my comfort zone.
I speak Spanish but my vocabulary is just not as big and so.
But I wrote this...
The song called (speaking foreign language).
I wanted to write a folk song
that feels like it's always existed.
- I love that.
- It's about these two caterpillars,
who are in love and they don't wanna let each other go,
but they have to because
that's the only way, they can become their next selves.
And it's sort of a metaphor
of what this family is going through.
- Are you just, like the best dude ever?
(Lin-Manuel laughing) (audience cheering)
I feel so good right now.
Like that's the happiest, sweetest, damn thing
I've ever heard like-
- Yeah, it's my wife who does not cry-
- (faintly speaking) it's like so nice.
I feel so good.
You wife what?
- My wife who does not cry at movies.
One of our first dates was "It's a Wonderful Life".
- She didn't cry at that?
- This is what she said,
"That was good. It was sad." (audience laughing)
And I was like,
I don't know if this is gonna work out.
- Yeah.
(audience laughing)
You're like, "Hey Tin Man"
- Totally a tin man.
- What's up?
- But she (speaking foreign language) gets her so,
you're all dead. - Oh my God.
So you're gonna die.
(Lin-Manuel laughing)
I cry at everything.
That's the thing too, that was funny about Hamilton.
Grown men would cry in this theater.
You would look around and they would be like,
(speaks gibberish).
And they'd be drinking their water to try and get the tears.
It was like, that's how you affect people,
did she cry at that?
- Yeah, yeah.
- Okay. Okay. Lie to me.
- Hamilton got her pretty good.
- Okay, good.
- But also remember like,
that's her husband getting shot on stage.
So it's a little different for my wife.
- So is she enjoying it?
- Yeah, yeah. She's enjoying it.
(Kelly laughing)
- Should have taken out the trash.
(Lin-Manuel laughing) (audience laughing)
She's slightly enjoying it.
So you went to Columbia to research for Encanto, right?
- Yeah.
- So what did you do there?
- Oh we did everything there.
We went to lots of cities and lots of towns
and the more rural areas
and just listened to a ton of music.
That was what was the most important to me,
was to really kind of... - Was the food good?
- The food was incredible.
And then we went to this place
that had 73 different varieties of coffee.
And,
- Oh that's heaven. - We just tasted
all the varieties. (audience laughing)
People ask me,
"Which character in Encanto is most like you?"
It's the little boy who is drinking coffee.
(audience laughing)
'Cause my grandmother started giving me coffee
when I was like six years old.
Don't try this at home kids.
(audience laughing)
And so I was...
I have a tattoo of a coffee cup.
- You're dedicated. That's loyal.
Okay. - Yeah so,
I was in heaven.
- That was like the highlight of the trip for me.
- I'm just curious, this is hard to pick but,
what's your favorite Disney song of all time?
I'm just curious.
- Oh, it's either "Under the Sea,"
- Oh, solid.
or "Kiss the Girl".
- Oh, both form Little Mermaid.
- Yeah, yeah.
I mean, my sons name is Sebastian.
It's deep with me. (audience laughing)
- No, I love that one.
Yeah. - Yeah.
- Under the sea is so great.
- It's the one that really kind-
- It was so different from everything else.
- It's so different. - Yeah.
- Like every Disney song felt like very classical
and just very orchestral
and here's this Caribbean calypso number.
- Yeah.
- I remember feeling weightless in the theater
and I feel like I've been chasing that feeling ever since.
- Oh my God.
I remember when it came out on VHS,
I was sitting in our apartment.
- I called in sick from school.
- My mom was a teacher-
- Remember the soft cassette covers?
- Yes. That you close, yeah!
Oh my god, we're old.
(audience laughing)
Anyway that's what that is,
but no, we should also mention it 'cause this is amazing.
This is your directorial debut in the movie, right?
- Yes.
- This is really cool, Tick Tick Boom.
- Yeah. Tick Tick Boom.
- Tick Tick Boom.
So what's behind the story?
I read about it.
I think it's fascinating, I actually didn't know this,
but tell everybody what it's about.
- Yeah, I'm here talking to you today
because I saw a rent for my seventeenth birthday.
That was the show
that made me feel like I could write musicals,
it felt so personal and homemade
and-
- It's very raw.
- I then found out that Johnathan Larson
wrote a musical before that.
He wrote a musical about being a song writer
and no one producing his work.
And just like, "I feel like it's never gonna happen for me."
He wrote this one-man show
that was a autobiographical about turning thirty
and spending his twenties writing a musical
that no one wanted to produce.
And it felt...
I saw it just when I was graduating college
and it just felt like message in a bottle to me,
because he's the person
who really got me started, writing musicals,
I wanted to make a movie of that show.
- Yeah.
- And the amazing Andrew Garfield
is embodying Jonathan Larson-
- Wow.
- In the movie.
And he's singing and playing piano
and he's incredible.
- Wow.
- And it was just like an amazing-
- It was such a huge thing in pop culture that rent.
I mean it was just- - Absolutely.
- I will never not hear
(singing) five hundred, twenty five thousand,
I mean literally if anybody says "Five hundred,"
that's where my brain goes.