-Our first guest is an Emmy, Grammy, and Tony winner
who wrote eight original songs for the movie "Encanto,"
which is streaming now on Disney+
and whose soundtrack is the number one soundtrack
on the Billboard charts.
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Lin-Manuel Miranda.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Yeah. That's what I'm talking about!
That's what I'm talking about, you feel the love, right?
Do you hear that? Come on. -Hi, everybody.
-Come on. -Love you.
-It is great to see you. I love that.
I love the short cut, the short haircut.
-Thank you. Yeah. I left my hair in four movies back in 2020.
-You really did. Yeah.
I want to talk about a little bit, if we can --
Tick, Tick, Boom.
That was the last time you were on our show
right before that release.
Were you happy with the response?
I mean, it's been nominated for all these awards.
-I'm so thrilled. It's it's just been amazing.
The response to my artists who are at a crossroads
in their lives and see the movie,
and that's exactly what it speaks to.
And then what I didn't anticipate was folks
who aren't artists who kind of understand it.
Like I've, I've heard from a lot of young writers
who showed the movie to their families to,
like, make them understand what they go through.
I remember screening a rough cut of the movie from my in-laws
and my father in-law, who is not in the arts at all,
there's a scene in the movie where, you know,
the agent tells Jonathan Jonathan's work falls through
and he goes, "What am I supposed to do now?"
And she says, "You write the next one
and then you write the next one and then you do that again."
And that's what it is to be a writer.
And I remember my father in-law like looking at me
as if he saw me for the first time and went, "Jesus Christ.
Is that your life?" -Yeah.
Is that right? And congrats, by the way,
if you just got nominated for Best Director by the DGA.
So that's.
First jet, first jam out! Come on, buddy.
It's streaming now on Netflix if you want to see.
Just, it's just a great movie, great performances all around.
-And Andrew Garfield, he's very good.
Andrew Garfield is just an insane --
did he, by the way, did Andrew Garfield,
did he tell you about "Spider-Man" at all?
When you worked with him? -He didn't.
But can I tell the story?
So the day it leaked, he might be involved.
He was on my set. We were still filming.
And between shots, I kind of quietly went over
to him and was like,
"Are you in the new 'Spider-Man'?"
And he exact reaction was, "What? Shut up, shut up.
Ha ha ha, shut up."
And I walked away thinking, "Oh, he's in the new 'Spider-Man.'"
And then when I saw him on your show,
like, he was a total pro at denying it.
-Oh yeah. -But he had to get there.
-Yeah, he had to get there, that's right.
Let's talk about "Encanto" right now.
Congrats on all this.
It's streaming now on Disney+.
You wrote eight original songs for it,
and the soundtrack is number one on the Billboard charts.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Bumped Adele out of the number one spot, by the way.
-I didn't my heart. -Not it's not in your heart.
Me neither. Not my heart, yeah. Of course love, Adele.
We don't talk about Bruno is officially the biggest single
ever from a Disney movie bigger than "Let It Go."
Did you -- what?
Did you know, did you feel coming, did you see this coming?
-No. Mainly because it's like group numbers
never get the same kind of love like that.
The ballads get or the, you know, the comedy songs get.
But I didn't know it was catchy
because when I was first writing it,
I would catch my kids singing it
just from overhearing me writing it.
And I remember I had had to have a like NDA
for toddlers conversation with them.
I was like, "You guys can't sing this at school."
We can only sing this around the house
because you know, your friends don't don't know the song yet.
-So, we don't talk about, we don't. We don't talk.
-We don't talk about. We don't talk about Bruno.
-Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
All the songs I love the beautiful song.
Is it Dos Oruguitas means two caterpillars?
-Yeah. -And it's just gorgeous.
But is this the first song you've written in completely
in Spanish?
Yeah, it was. It was the first song
that written beginning to end in Spanish.
The second Colombia, Mi Encanto is earlier in the movie,
but honestly,
it's the the moment where that song happens
is this moment of kind of unspeakable tragedy.
You know, Abuela is telling this really tough story from her,
from her youth and the notion of her singing that felt wrong.
So it was like, "Alright, so we need to have something that --
Sometimes you figure out what a song
is by figuring out what it's not.
And I thought, "We need, like, a nature metaphor."
We need it to feel like a folk song
that's kind of always existed. And so then I thought,
"What if it's about these two caterpillars in love
and they don't want to let go of each other,
but they have to let go of each other
so that the miracle can happen
and they can become their next selves?"
-I mean, it's just
it's describing everyone's welling up here.
They are through Zoom.
You're the first person to make someone cry through Zoom.
Oh my gosh. -Well, you know, it's funny,
and I kind of just sort of pitch that,
and I wrote the first verse and chorus
and played it for the rest of the creative team
at our weekly music Zoom meetings.
I only had like the first verse through the chorus,
and I played it for them,
and I just remember that reaction.
It was just like, "You should probably keep writing it."
[ Laughter ]
I think we got something there. Okay.
Yeah, I want to show everyone a clip.
Here is that song from Disney's "Encanto."
Take a look at this.
♪♪
-♪ Dos oruguitas ♪
♪ Enamoradas ♪
♪ Pasan sus noches ♪
♪ Y madrugadas ♪
♪ Llenas de hambre ♪
♪ Siguen andando ♪
♪ Y navegando un mundo ♪
♪ Que cambia y sigue cambiando ♪
♪ Navegando un mundo ♪
♪ Que cambia y sigue cambiando ♪
-Lin-Manuel Miranda.
"Encanto" is streaming now on Disney+
More "Tonight Show" after the break.
Stick around, everybody.