BONUS: Lin-Manuel Miranda on Hamilton in DC, lessons & hip hop with Ari Melber

19:48But they said, unless you have anything about the American experience. And I was like, I have one thing about the American experience. Because it was just that germ. I had just started writing. And again, like you hear, I introduce it as an album. It wasn't even a show yet in my head. And, um, and so I'm sort of like amazed at the bravery of that 29 year old me. You were 29 on that seat. Yeah. You can see me stammering because, you know, I made the mistake of looking the president in the eye. I was like, that's too terrifying. Um, and just looking around the room until I found my focus. And then having the full journey of, I kind of showed everyone the sonogram really early because the other bit of luck that comes with that performance was it was filmed for HBO.

20:30HBO was following around their poets who were performing, which is why it looks so professional. It doesn't look like the typical C-SPAN footage. So by the time the musical came out, the YouTube comments under that video were like, my social studies teacher showed me this. Our fifth grade teacher show this it was all that video was already living its own life as a little short primer on young alexander hamilton and and that we were able to um that i was able to finish it in time to perform it in obama's last year in office was felt like a very full circle moment

21:00Lin-Manuel Miranda:and because you had just those 16 bars yeah and you know andre 3000 says sometimes 16 ain't enough 16 ain't enough. Respect. My jelly bean's descending. Hey. Yeah. Are you trying to remember the whole verse? Kelly Green with envy. My jelly bean's descending. Yeah. I mean, we could just quote on it. Do we have time? Just two geriatric millennials quoting on it. Well, I was just thinking about it. You know, you use the Hamilton, the writing to completely meet people where they are. I mean, that's what I was in awe of the first time I saw it. If you come in cold, you get a great show. If you like a lot of good art, if you learn and study and know a little more, you might get another letter.

21:48Yeah, if you know about the Federalist Papers, that's like an Easter egg. And another.

21:51Lin-Manuel Miranda:Yeah. And so I just have notes here on some of the ways you just touch on these references, right? Very early on, you have Prodigy, only 19, but my mind is older. My favorites. The cabinet rap battles are steeped in both the original oratory of that era and a link to hip-hop. Biggie, you give much love to in many ways. Songs, references, spelling. Jay-Z is in there. Busta is in there melodically. Brandy and Monica are in there. 100%. And so we made something for you. You've probably seen pieces of this. But you quote all of these greats from the founding fathers to the to the greats of hip hop to then build something else.

22:34Lin-Manuel Miranda:So you're quoting lyrics. Fair? Hundred percent. Now in politics. It's so great. Isn't it crazy? Everybody's quoting you. Some of these you might have seen. I'm terrified of who's about to appear. Let's take a look. What was it that Lin-Manuel Miranda said? The room where it happens. Isn't it great to be in the room where it happens? Why I'm not necessarily in the room where it happens. And I think, by the way, for all of us, whether we're in the Senate or the governor's homes or whether the president himself, you think of the line from Hamilton, history has its eyes on you. And Master, this is certainly the room where it happens.

23:13Lin-Manuel Miranda:This is the room where it happens. Though we may not live to see the glory as the song from the musical Hamilton goes, Let us gladly join the fight. And every little girl and boy in America is going to know anything and everything is possible as the first black woman will be in the room where it happens in the U.S. Supreme Court.

23:38It's pretty funny. You created a language. I anticipated, I hoped hip hop fans would like it. I hoped theater fans would like it. I did not anticipate how those in the halls of power would grab onto all of these songs about power. Because Rumor It Happens is, as you notice, the most quoted one. And that's what everyone's trying to get into. And the fact that that song is about the deals that happen in the back room and it's narrated by the one guy who wasn't in the room, I think really speaks to politicians, man. I mean, if you got Mitt Romney and Amy quoting it like that's pretty crazy.

24:18Lin-Manuel Miranda:Well, you captured a truth that is both nonpartisan and almost. Trans historical post historical, if I can measure out a word where from that era to this era to probably in the future, you're a young artist, so probably for decades forth. Yeah. It's not about which issue they're fighting over or which party they're in. It's the idea that people want so badly and you narrate and show the ambition of a person and how ambition can drive you in a country and a movement to great things. Or it can be your downfall, the heat of it. But can I say, I think that, again, because I try to wrap my head around the success of this show that has completely changed my life and my family's life.

25:01I think, excuse me, I think the secret sauce is that I didn't learn a lot of this stuff in high school. And when I read this book and was gripped by this story and Ron Chernow's telling of it, I had to brush up on it. So the secret sauce is I'm the substitute teacher who's learning this a chapter ahead of writing it, digesting it, and turning it into song for you to hear. So there's that excitement of like, can you believe this? Can you believe this is how this happened? And like that this is how that deal happened. And it's marked by a plaque downtown where people smoke outside a building in Wall Street.

25:37It's amazing to me how, you know, and I think that when I was writing The Cabinet Battles, again, the insight that allowed me to write it was, oh, we're fighting about the same things. That our fights are just like our family squabbles, our new versions of old dynamics. We have dynamics as a country, too. And we will always fight about when we're 50 states and when we're one nation. We will always fight about when to get involved in the affairs of others and when to mind our own business and be isolationist. Those are our family fights.

26:09Lin-Manuel Miranda:Yeah, we can't fight all of France's wars. Right. Maybe some of them, but not all of them. But you're describing that joy of what you call discovery. That leaps off the page and the stage. You're not coming in as someone who sat with this for 20 years and be like, oh, yeah, they handled this. No, you're going, guys, look at this. And then people meet you there. And the way the art interplays with history but then remains relevant, you describe what is one of the greatest, I think, most known things about Washington, although you make it dramatic in the play. So Jefferson's resigned. Oh, great.

26:46Lin-Manuel Miranda:Dope. Get him out of here. No, he's resigned to run. Oh, fine. You'll crush him, boss, Hamilton says to Washington. And then the reveal, I love it because it's something we are taught even in even in more abundant history class. People know Washington, you know, stepped aside. That was a big deal. And then but in the in the story, it still comes like a reveal. No, I'm not running either. And we get Hamilton, Mr. President, they'll say you're weak. Washington, no, they'll see we're strong. Hamilton, your position so unique. So I'll use it to move them along. Why do you have to say goodbye? If I say goodbye, the nation learns to move on.

27:24Lin-Manuel Miranda:It outlives me when I'm gone. Something that, however we got there, was what a sitting president then landed on in getting out of the way for Kamala Harris. Have you been thinking about that? I have gotten a lot of texts about it. Yeah, you know, there's an apocryphal story that they ask King George III, well, what if George Washington actually steps down? and King George's response was, then he will have been the greatest man who ever lived. You know, people who get power like power point to every probably example from the news feed this evening. And it is very rare when someone, you know, the fact that for all his many faults, he had the wisdom to step down and model a smooth transition of power, I think is, you know, really is one of the things that allowed our fledgling democracy to succeed in its infancy.

28:24And also, yeah, when Biden stepped down, I got a lot of texts being like, if you don't sing one last time in his last year. So people saw, everyone saw those parallels very quickly. Again, that's one of those surreal things that every day there's a reminder of how this thing has, This show has leapt off the arts and leisure page and into popular culture.

28:48Lin-Manuel Miranda:Is it positive for society if we model that in culture? And not that you set out to do that, but that you've echoed that. I'll give you a very different example outside of politics. We have the biggest wealth gap in the history of the world. Who knows what's going to come of that? But there's a lot of downside to it. Bill Gates does many things. People have many views of him. But one thing he has measurably done is started to actually give away a lot of his current wealth. And I've seen headlines that say it's great that he and Buffett are doing that. I've also seen headlines in the news that say Gates drops down the billionaire list.

29:24Lin-Manuel Miranda:They're actually this is not like you lost him for the thing he said he was going to. Yeah. And if you and billionaires are still human beings and politicians, as you explore, are human beings. And so I was thinking, does it matter whether we figure out how to get smart about what we say we value, which is if you have enough and you share from kindergarten to many cultural and religious teachings? We think that's good. I think a lot of people think that's supposed to be good. I think that's a net. Yeah. So does it matter? And did you contribute to that because you're giving a different support to an old tradition that's a good one?

29:58Well, you know, it's interesting. I mean, I think that in zeroing in on that act, first of all, I got a great act to solo for Chris Jackson, who's one of my best friends. So I was very happy to give him that great solo. But I also, you know, I think it's important, especially at a time when we have a presidential candidate who hasn't even acknowledged that he lost in 2020, you know, and a vice presidential candidate with him who won't acknowledge it either. You know, election denialism is so scary and it's so like the first step down the road to autocracy, in my view. So, you know, I think it's a very important reminder that like we have always been really good at ceding power and transferring power.

30:44And we've just recently gotten not good at it, like in the very recent history of our country.

30:50Lin-Manuel Miranda:And in reflecting on where it started, you talk about you being 29 and that Obama era and that mood. People remember it. What you just described, the backlash to the Obama era is Trumpian and MAGA. And it's many things. But that includes the denialism you just mentioned, the attack on fact, science and any kind of constitutional democracy. And also a lot of racist attacks on people for where they come from, how they look, where their parents come from, where their grandparents come from. It's a point that Leslie Odom made when we talked to him about both you and your art and this idea that that America would let racists hijack what was always all the way back to Hamilton, a nation of immigrants.

31:34Lin-Manuel Miranda:Yeah. Can I play that for you? And then go ahead. Yeah, I want to see Leslie. All right. Here it is. There's something special that happens in your brain and in your body when you're watching Lynn play Hamilton, a Puerto Rican American. You know, you're watching, you know, you're watching Lynn slap fives with David and say, immigrants, we get the job done. That show in the context of this country that has a history of blackface, of vaudeville and blackface and how that has permeated, you know, how it permeated the cartoons we watched as kids. You know what I mean? The remnants from a really distorted, mean, you know, caricature of people of color.

32:21Lin-Manuel Miranda:You know, this is the flip side of that. Man, I love him. And you had a great tan in 2020. I don't have it now. Yeah, you know, I mean, it's, I'm really, I think one of the other legacies of Hamilton that I'm really moved by, and I think about that, seeing Leslie speak, is that now we've had nine years of companies. And that's nine years of artists of color on that stage. We've gone on to do such extraordinary things. Leslie, chief among them, the Oscar nominee, Ari DuBose, who was the bullet in our original production, is now an Oscar winning actress. And again, like they were not Hamilton didn't make them superstars.

33:04They were already superstars. They just didn't have roles that allowed them to be seen as superstars. So one of the legacies I'm proudest of is that this show continues to give artists of color an incredible platform to show people what they can do.

33:19Lin-Manuel Miranda:So when you look at that and the way you broke that barrier, that sophistication, how does that compare? And that sort of just either blind or open casting, whatever you want to call it. But it was a different approach, obviously different George Washington to some of the narrower debates now that actors should have to reflect some or all of the reality of their character in their own identity or their own life. Because it's all quite complicated. Yeah. And again, like I think for me, I never felt anything controversial about the casting until the world freaked out. Really? I was again, like I said in the in the intro in 2009, this is a hip hop story in my vision of it.

33:58So even as I'm reading Ron's book for the first time, I'm picturing who's the greatest R &B artist to play George Washington. Who's the greatest hip hop artist to play Hercules Mulligan? So, of course, my cast is going to reflect that. But you had written a hip hop score. I had an all white cast. Wouldn't you think I screwed up?

34:16Lin-Manuel Miranda:Well, less less importantly than what I might think, you had to know that a black George Washington would be a thing. Yeah. But again, like for me, the way again I was I never sought to glorify these folks. I always sought to just write the most interesting and compelling version of these stories. And so, you know, I've seen Shakespeare with amazing actors of color for years. And so to me, these are just our founding stories in the same way that Shakespeare was writing about kings and queens of his era. I was like, we get to tell these stories, too. We live in the country that these folks built.

34:50Lin-Manuel Miranda:But it also worked artistically, right? If you did that one thing and it didn't work, there'd be a different reception of it. Oh, yeah. But the way it worked was also to, you know, to disaggregate or unshackle some of the themes and ideas you were exploring from race, which mattered then. Slaveholding states matters now. But you also use that to then make I mean, the Jefferson character in your telling was much different. And we got more of an exploration of the ideas, even as they were blinkered by their own time than the traditional telling. Well, I mean, I guess that's a that's like quite a dissertation on what we did.

35:28Lin-Manuel Miranda:Because I read I was reading like I've read. It's a weird thing to say, but like I've read everything Jefferson's written, because when you go to law school. Even when he brought macaroni from Europe, which is a crazy fact about Jefferson. What did he write about macaroni? Well, he brought it like we didn't have it. And he brought it to the States. He was like, guys, you know about macaroni? Great. I don't remember the macaroni. I just read like all his letters. Yeah. Everything that he did around the found all the founding documents in law school, you read. So I had this whole version of him that was rooted in truth, but was not alive.

35:58Yeah. Well, I mean, for me, the way to musically, my musical way into Jefferson is that, one, the challenge is he's not really around during the American Revolution. He's in France. Yeah. So he shows up in Act Two, and now I've got to get everyone comfortable with an entirely new character who's going to be Hamilton's main political antagonist. So one of the ways we solved that was the doubling of parts. So you're happy to see Dovey Diggs again. And we love this guy. He was Lafayette. So that's like a nice dramatic shortcut. The other is I kind of again, if if in our telling hip hop is the language of revolution, Jefferson's been listening to jazz in France.

36:38So he comes in and it's a completely different swing and energy than anything you've heard before. And so we've also got a musical contrast.

36:49Lin-Manuel Miranda:Does casting him as the old Lafayette also bring out the tension in Hamilton's relationship with both of them? or is that just a bonus? Well, I think the fact that you've got him as a Frenchman and then a Francophile works really beautifully. And also, you know, David Diggs is one of the most talented people alive. So I could just give him the hardest raps that he could do. And it's light work for him. Light work. I love that. We also wanted to at least briefly touch on all the other things you've been doing. So this is just looking at about a minute of a bunch of other stuff. OK, great. History has its eyes on you I'm not mad when I got mad when I got mad I got mad Dos oruguitas enamoradas pasan sus noches Yeah, I'm a street light choking on the heat The world spins around while I'm frozen to my seat.

37:54The people that I know will keep on rolling down the street. But every day is different, so I'm switching up the beat. It was you and I, just you and I. And now the horizon holds so much more. But then suddenly one day a stranger started into sing.

38:11Lin-Manuel Miranda:He said, oh, I'm the dirty rascal and I'm here to teach the king. All of these songs are written by this guy, Lin-Manuel Miranda, by the way. He's awesome. Do you see any consistent thread or maybe there isn't one? I mean, for me, well, first of all, in the Heights, I'm like a baby. I'm like a zygote on that stage. That was my Broadway debut. But I think from the through line I see is that Hamilton's the first line of my obituary. Like, no matter what happens, like that's Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, you know, falls in open sewer. Maybe. What if you make something crazy big? Yeah, but again, like, I choose to see that as liberating.

38:51I see. So for me, the projects I've chosen since are what am I going to learn from by this experience? And, you know, when I look at Mary Poppins, I think I went to film school with Rob Marshall for eight months and I got to live in London with my wife and learn a lot about filmmaking, which was my first love and led me to directing my first film. You know, I fell in love with musical storytelling because I saw Little Mermaid when I was nine years old. So getting to write these animated songs that these kids love, I'm always just trying to write for nine year old me. Nine year old you. Yeah. And so, you know, that's the joy of doing those.

39:30Lin-Manuel Miranda:So funny question that I was thinking about. You know, we've had the opportunity here to talk to a lot of different people in the arts at different stages of their career. uh adversity darkness sadness loss these are big themes sure um your art i don't know you as a person personally but your art is so positive and hopeful i mean everyone in hamilton dies are i don't know i don't know i mean it depends on how you watch well that's the story but again if you went i could argue that with you if you went grading on the curve of how that story has been told, which I alluded to earlier, to how you tell it, I would say that's one of the more positive versions, glosses on the stuff you're dealing with of all of the canon of hundreds of years.

40:17Lin-Manuel Miranda:And then, of course, organically or otherwise, you can tell us how it happens. You end up being pulled into more children's stories, more Disney of a largely positive nature. They deal with serious themes. But I'm curious, artistically, is that positivity a product of your natural state, your goals, or you don't even notice it? I think that, well, I think we unconsciously make, you know, I think I'm in the arts because as much as my parents didn't want me to be in the arts, they loved the arts. And by their love of the arts, they showed me something I really wanted to do. And my dad, as a kid, took me to every action movie and every musical.

40:56His favorite movies are like Total Recall and The Unsinkable Molly Brown. And my mother loves every sad, intense, depressing. She took me to Last Tango in Paris and Schindler's List. And so I think unconsciously, I'm always trying to make the thing that both my parents will like. Really? We're going to sing, we're going to dance, we're going to have a good time, but you will think about mortality and you will be crying by the end of it.

41:23Lin-Manuel Miranda:Why didn't your father want you to go into the arts? I think he said what your parents probably said to you. You're very creative. You should be a lawyer. And I married a lawyer, so I'm good now. Oh, yeah, you got the J.D. somewhere in the household. J.D. is hanging on someone else's wall. But you are aware of some unconscious or semi-conscious desire to speak to both of them. Yeah, I think that's right. And to meet them. I think I saw how much music affected my parents, and I wanted to affect people in that way. So have you heard Howard Stern talk about going to radio? No, but I'm a big Howard Stern fan.

41:58So he says that when he was young, he had what he felt was a tough or cold relationship with his father.

42:05Lin-Manuel Miranda:Not running his father down, but that era, hard to get his love and attention in a visible way. And then his dad sometimes when he would say, look at whatever it was, look at this drawing or look what I did. His dad would say, quiet, I'm listening to the radio. I mean, there you have it. what was in the box was important. And Howard said it wasn't until later life therapy that he then said, well, I'm trying to reach them that way. And so you're telling me that the two poles of this mood is reaching both of them. And maybe it's great that you had such diverse vibes from your parents. Absolutely.

42:41And I also think that, again, like Warriors was a movie I saw unsupervised. And I also think, you know, my parents both worked a lot. I have never known my parents to ever have one job ever. Um, and so there was also just like a lot of good benign neglect. I was left to my own devices as a kid and it was a pre-internet time. So I just had a lot of time with, and my sister's six years older, a lot of time with my imagination.

43:07Lin-Manuel Miranda:I love that. Um, before we let you get out of here, we'd like to do a lightning round. Okay. It's in a word or a sentence. Okay. In a word or a sentence. Got it. The warriors. Bronx to Coney, Get Home Alive. Hamilton the Man.

43:29Relentless, nonstop.

43:32Lin-Manuel Miranda:Hamilton the Play. Relentless, toe tapping. Broadway or film?

43:44Broadway.

43:46Lin-Manuel Miranda:Writing or singing? Writing. Journalism or history?

43:53Lin-Manuel Miranda:journalism Puerto Rico or New York New York art or truth can it be both all right there's a last one Disney or Disney well I think our corporate overlords know the answer to that I was thinking about these for you specifically for you and then as I went I was like they got more and more like to become a self parody. So I wanted to end there. A real one. Best advice you've ever gotten. My my mom, I think, saw my artistic tendencies really early and hit me with it's all grist for the mill when I was really, really young. So when I was going through really hard times, if I was in agony, if I was miserable, she would go, it's grist for the mill.

44:40You want to be a writer, right? You're going to need to use this someday. So don't shut down. Remember what this feels like because you'll need it later. And in that kind of created the, you know, the recorder in my brain. And I think inadvertently created an artist with that advice.

44:57Lin-Manuel Miranda:I'll tell you what my mom said. And my mom's extraordinary. Life is never about what happens to you. It's only about what you do with it. It's good. And if it's hard, cause it's hard, things happen, but when you're young, when you at least get the hope of that, some days you don't maybe get to live up to that, but the hope of that means at least the next day or the third day you wake up and go, wait a minute, okay, what are we going to do here? Which is hard. Best advice you've ever given? Oh man, best advice I've ever given. I mean, I try to pass my mom's on advice. Well, I guess, you know, I think - No, you need to do your own writing, Lynn.

45:35Lin-Manuel Miranda:You need to come up with your own stuff. I think the thing I tell writers a lot is what is the story that only you can tell? Ah. You know, you're going to chase your heroes and your early work is going to sound like the people you like and you are imitating consciously or unconsciously, but eventually you'll bring all of yourself to your work. And that's what you really sound like. Final three. Failure means. Failure means not getting back up. Success means. Success means, um, the luxury of doing what you love. Being a maverick means. Um, you know, doing what you love, even if everyone thinks it's a terrible elevator pitch.

46:20Lin-Manuel Miranda:Lin-Manuel Miranda, thank you so much. We really appreciate it. Check it out, The Warriors.

46:32Lin-Manuel Miranda:Can I just quickly say hello to you? For me, being a part of this place has always been about the people, not about the politics. Why are you holding this sign? You ever been to a protest before? Be safe. People that we cover who allow us to enter their lives. How's everybody doing? Everybody doing okay? How long has it been in line? I love human beings. To spend time connecting with them is the biggest blessing that I could ask for. From the field to the studio, Jacob is finding the heart of the story. Connect with Jacob Soboroff. Weekends at 10 a.m. Eastern on MS Now.