Thomas Kail revealed more on how Lin-Manuel Miranda ended up playing Roy Scheider in Fosse/Verdon in an interview with Vanity Fair: “When I was first thinking about the show, I mean years ago, like when we were talking about Sam, I mean the next idea I had for casting—I was like, you kind of look like Roy Scheider. I mean, you’re not as attractive or sinewy, but we should do that. And he was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then we kind of got closer and he was like, Hey, remember when you mentioned that? I was like, yeah, no, I remember. He’s like, well what do you think? And I was like, I don’t know. Do you have a SAG card? And so he did. So I made him read for the role.”

Check the latest photos of the episode in our Gallery.

Under the cut, you can find more quotes from the Vanity Fair article and some from a TheaterMania interview.

Lin-Manuel Miranda appeared as a surprise cameo in the last episode of Fosse/Verdon, the FX limited series he produced. He briefly played Roy Scheider — the actor who plays Joe Gideon, Bob Fosse’s version of Bob Fosse, in the director’s acclaimed 1979 semi-autobiographical film All That Jazz. Speaking of the experience with Entertainment Weekly, he explained how he landed the role: “There are so many theatrical heroes that pop up in the lives of Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon — Hal Prince and John Kander and Stephen Schwartz, all people we genuinely love. So my running joke was, am I playing Schwartz? Am I playing Kander? It was sort of my way of nudging [director Tommy Kail], and then Tommy was like, ‘You don’t look unlike Roy Scheider.’”

Atlantic also realesed a cover of the song Mr. Bojangles performed by Miranda. It’s available for download and streaming.

Under the cut, you can find the whole Entertainment Weekly article.