We collected the inteviews, video and written, that Lin-Manuel Miranda gave so far to promote In The Heights movie.
Let’s start with Rotten Tomatoes.
REMEZCLA: […] Broadway superstar Lin-Manuel Miranda, who wrote the music and lyrics for the original stage play, says he chose Jon M. Chu (Crazy Rich Asians) for the film adaptation of In the Heights because he “understood the first-generation immigrant experience in a lived-in way” much like Miranda.
“We met with lots of directors for [In the Heights],” Miranda tells Remezcla during a recent interview. “[Jon] understood the struggle in a very tactile way. That transcended Latino vs. non-Latino.”
Like Miranda, Chu is a first-generation American whose family started their own small businesses and raised a large family. Miranda said that influenced In the Heights as much as anything else.
“[Jon] understood the nuance of when your parents make miracles happen,” Miranda says. “They did the hardest part. They came here not speaking the language. They made a way where there was no way. He understood that on a bone level.”
Miranda agrees that it’s natural for audiences to want to “see more people… tell their own stories.” That’s what initially attracted him to In the Heights.
“I don’t think anyone’s against that,” he says. “In the Heights exists because I wanted to see a musical where Latinos got to tell their own stories without crime or drugs at the center. That just straight up didn’t exist when I was growing up. I wanted to create what was missing. I think that dialogue is about people being allowed to create what’s missing and being supported in doing that.”
THE WASHINGTON POST: […] (Olga Merediz) She’s certainly made an impact on Miranda, who also gets emotional thinking about her portrayal. He remembers being 19 years old and writing Abuela Claudia, inspired by his own Abuela Mundi, and the lyrics of In the Heights when he was struggling to carve a career for himself as a Latino on the Great White Way. With the help of Hudes, he wrote himself as leading man Usnavi (though in the film he has a smaller role, as the Piragua Guy).
“It’s been literally half my life,” he says, laughing. “I am finally getting to see the movie of this thing that really began because I desperately wanted a life in this business and didn’t see the roles for me. I don’t dance well enough to play Bernardo [in West Side Story] or Paul in A Chorus Line. And for Puerto Rican dudes, that’s it.”
Miranda realizes that the community, both in the film and beyond, is in debt to women like Merediz who climbed their way to the top and helped make the road a little easier for those who came after them. “We stand on Abuela Claudia’s shoulders, Olga’s shoulders, Priscilla Lopez’s shoulders, Rita Moreno’s shoulders and Chita Rivera’s shoulders, who had to make a way where there was no way,” he says, holding back tears. “The woman [Merediz] who had to play [a] maid after [portraying a] doctor gets a f—ing aria in this movie.”