Lin-Manuel Miranda

Presenter0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs Podcast. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. This is an extended version of the original Radio 4 broadcast and, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:45

How does a musical theatre-loving hip-hop nerd from Manhattan start a theatrical phenomenon and reshape American attitudes towards the birth of their nation by telling the story of the country's first bureaucrat? My castaway this week is Lynn-Manuel Miranda. His show Hamilton also starts with a question about the apparently unlikely success of its titular hero, one of America's founding fathers, Alexander Hamilton. To call it a smash is an understatement. It has sold over a billion dollars worth of tickets, won 11 Tony's, a Grammy, and a Pulitzer Prize, and been described by former First Lady Michelle Obama as the best piece of art in any form that I have ever seen in my life. Not content with writing and starring in his musicals, he's also a star of the big screen, recently playing Jack the Lamplighter in Mary Poppins Returns, and this November he'll be on our small screens in the TV adaptation of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials. Oh, and he also raps too. More of that later. He says, when you're making something, you're trying to fall in love with it, to express the best version of that idea. I think my subconscious tries to create the high I first felt when I was in Pirates of Penzance in the eighth grade. Lynn Manuel Miranda, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Thank you. So tell me about that high then, the Pirates of Penzance. You must have been 13? I think I was 14, 14 going on 15, to steal from the vaughan traps. And I got cast as the Pirate King. It was my first time auditioning for the school musical. And to be a freshman and get one of the lead roles felt like a coup in a way. That was an enormous vote of confidence. Also, it just felt like, oh, okay, I could be good at this. And I just remember working so hard. Gilbrand Sullivan ain't easy.

Lin-Manuel Miranda2:00

Yeah.

Presenter2:32

So I just remember the applause at the end of that thing feeling like the most gratifying sound I'd ever heard. And I feel like I've been chasing that ever since.

Presenter2:43

Your creative and professional life is hugely varied. You're an actor, a musical director, composer, MC, playwright. The inside of your head must be a very busy place. Is it always worrying? Can you ever switch it off?

Presenter2:55

Sure. My mom and my dad have very different viewing habits. My mom took me to see Breaking the Waves, Schindler's List, Living Las Vegas, the heavy stuff. And my dad took me to every Schwarzenegger movie and every musical. And as I've grown up in my own habits, I find at the end of the day, I'm my dad. I just need something mindless and fun and or heartwarming, you know, because the world's hard enough.

Presenter3:23

One of your many talents is freestyle rap, which is entirely improvised and spontaneous. Once with Barack Obama in The Rose Garden. That was a not unstressful experience. Tell me about it. It was surreal. It was their idea, actually. And I said, okay. And I remember talking to the president at the time and saying, if you could sort of start slow and speed up, that would be great. That would sort of make it more dynamic. And he cut me off mid-sentence like, I know, I know, I know. We're just going to do what we're going to do.

Lin-Manuel Miranda3:30

Oh no, no way

Presenter3:53

And I was like, okay. So it was scary and probably not my best freestyle, but the best I could do in that moment with the leader of the free world. It was pretty incredible. Well handled, I would say. Of course, you're going to be sharing your music choices with us today. Tell us about the first disc. Why have you chosen this one? Well, I have so many associations with this song. Mainly, I think of my mother in our subaru growing up, sort of turning the dial all the way to the top and screaming along with Liza, because that's how I fell in love with musical theater. I think all of us sort of see what moves our parents. And then, as I grew older, falling in love with Liza's delivery of this incredible Kandor and Ebb song, because she holds that note that when I go, I'm going like Elsie, when I go, just a little longer than she needs to. And the way her voice kind of cracks but perfectly cracks on the last buh in cabaret, it's really alive. And I get goosebumps every time I hear it.

Speaker 34:56

Stop by admitting from cradle to tomb It isn't that long a story

Speaker 35:09

Life is

Presenter5:10

He's a cavalry-o-chum. It's only a cavalry-o-chum. And I love a cat.

Presenter5:30

Cabaret, Lynn, Manuel, Miranda, you're feeling every note of that. Oh, yeah. And that final B, you're totally right. The butt.

Lin-Manuel Miranda5:35

Yeah.

Presenter5:37

She gives everything to that bar. Cabaret performed by Eliza Minelli, composed by John Candor, with lyrics by Fred Ebb.

Presenter5:45

Lynn Manuel Miranda Hamilton then, as we know, continues to be hugely successful. And as I mentioned, the show starts by pointing out its hero's inauspicious beginnings. Alexander Hamilton was an illegitimate orphan immigrant to the US who would become one of the founding fathers. Now, the musical style is mostly hip-hop. Much of the vocal performance in the show is rap. And it's based on the book by Ron Chernow. What was the moment when you thought, this, this is the idea, this is going to fly? At the end of the second chapter of reading the book. And the thesis that came to me was, this guy's a wordsmith. And he used words to get himself out of his circumstances. He literally writes about a hurricane that destroys St. Croix. And it is so good, it is used for relief efforts. It's published in, I think it's called the Danish American Gazette. And his cousin begins to take up a collection to get him off the island. And I, in that moment, thought, well, that's hip-hop. That notion of writing about your struggle so specifically that you transcend it and that you elicit a response in others. And he starts writing under a pseudonym. What's more hip-hop than writing under a pseudonym? Words were his passport to everything. And to me, that's what my favorite MCs do. And so that was the thesis for all of it. I understand that it isn't congruous, the notion of these founders with this very contemporary form of music. But at the same time, I just thought it made sense for Hamilton. The fact that this guy really wrote his way into everything is it seems a unique way of telling. Tell me about casting the show. It features actors from many different backgrounds telling the story of an immigrant to the US. Why was that important to you?

Presenter7:29

One, it's part of the initial impulse. I was never picturing literal founders, and I think we looked for the most diverse group of people who could bring these words to life as possible. And Tommy Kale, who is my director on both In the Heights and Hamilton, Tommy ran with that initial impulse and elevated it to this principle. He just sort of said, this is the story of America then told by America now. And I didn't realize what a big deal that was until you see it on stage, until they all come downstage in that moment in the opening number and sing the word time at the top of their lungs. And how thrilling that is, that it is this prism, this sort of way of looking at the past through a very contemporary lens, because that's the only way we understand. You know, I've been seeing Shakespeare cast with incredible actors of color my entire life, so it didn't seem that weird to me, but it certainly made an impression.

Presenter8:26

It's time to go to the music. What's your second disc today? Why have you chosen it? Well, this was my sneaky attempt to sneak three songs into the Desert Island discs format. I tried to sneak in The Crane Wife's 1, 2, and 3 by The Decembrists, but they cleverly outwitted me. I just love these songs. I think the Decembrists are at the forefront of expanding the vocabulary of what rock music and what pop music can do. I learned new words from their songs. And I also, at the peak of Hamilton craziness, and I don't mean inside the building, doing the show was always a joy, but there was craziness around the building. It got harder to get in and out of the theater as people got more and more obsessed with the show and started hanging around. And my calm in the storm, I used to, I tried like meditation apps. They don't work. I just focus on how much I'm not focusing for 15 minutes and then it's over. But I found that if I listened to The Crane Wife 1, 2, and 3, I could plug into the story and sort of zone out. And that was my meditation during the Hamilton year where I was playing the role.

Lin-Manuel Miranda8:36

No, no, come on later.

Speaker 39:33

My crane wine

Speaker 39:37

Arrived at my door in the moonlight

Speaker 39:45

Our star bright

Speaker 39:49

And tongue tie.

Speaker 39:53

I took a ring.

Speaker 210:01

We were a man.

Speaker 210:05

Yeah.

Presenter10:05

Pan bells rang sweet

Presenter10:10

The Crane Wife 2 by The Decembrists. Lynn Manuel Mirandi were born in 1980 in New York City. Your parents, Luci and Luis, emigrated there from Puerto Rico. Your mother was a psychologist, your dad a political consultant. Let me ask you a little bit about your neighborhood. I've seen it described as nosebleed territory. A little bit rude. I lived off 200th Street, in the second to last stop on the A-Train. And it was like a tiny Latin American country. You know, Washington Heights and Inwood, all of northern Manhattan, really, were really the first chapter in so many immigrant stories to the U.S. And, you know, first lead to Italians, then an enormous amount of Jewish refugees during and after World War II. Then it was a huge Irish neighborhood. And we moved there when I was one year old in 1981. And in the 70s, there was a huge Dominican influx from the Dominican Republic. And so we had a live-in nanny growing up who actually raised my father in Puerto Rico. And when I was born, she came to live with us and help raise me and my sister. So she'd raised two generations of us. And she never spoke a word of English her entire life. You didn't have to in my neighborhood. Everyone spoke Spanish. Even the businesses that weren't Latino-owned spoke Spanish because that was the clientele. And what about spending summer in Puerto Rico as a child? You would go over there and spend summers with your father's family. What are your memories of the islands? Yeah, I mean, they were great and largely independent because my grandparents both worked until the day they died. My grandmother ran a travel agency when travel agencies were still a thing. It was called Viajes Miranda. And she was a real gossip, and that was the perfect job for her because she knew who was booking a plane ticket where. Next door to that shop on Calle Colón was my aunt, who owned a school supply store that also had the Slurpee machine. They were called Frisis in Puerto Rico, but I used to run that because school started in August. So I would be there while school started for regular kids. And I would, during the lunch rush, be serving Slurpees. And then across the plaza in the town, my grandfather was the general manager of the town credit union and their bank, which I associate with just lots of free white construction paper out of which to make airplanes and flipbooks. So I was sort of shuttling between.

Presenter12:30

Lots of people who were working, none of whom spoke English. So it was a perfect total immersion for me, one month a year. And I feel like in your description, I can almost hear it. Is that where you developed your ear for dialogue, tuning into gossip? Yeah, like gossip as a child. A little bit. I mean, even North Manhattan didn't feel like small town life. I didn't have small town life except in the summers. And my name wasn't Ling Manuel in Puerto Rico. My name was Esa eligo Luisito que fue enu vai yorc. That's Luis's son who went to New York.

Lin-Manuel Miranda12:42

Yeah, like gossip as a child.

Presenter13:00

That is, yeah. You have to title. Yeah, I say El de Luisito. That's Luisito's kid. And I think that the best recipe you can make, I've said this before, but the best recipe for being a writer is being a little out of place everywhere. I also won the lotto when I was five years old and got into this very elite public school called Hunter. And so I was shuttling from 200th Street to the Upper East Side. So again, I'm the kid who goes to the fancy school in my neighborhood. I'm the kid who speaks Spanish with kind of a messed up gringo accent in Puerto Rico. And at school, I'm the kid who like lives all the way uptown. So that's a great recipe for making a writer because you're always kind of thinking about which part of yourself you're bringing into the conversation, which part of me is most applicable to the people I'm around.

Lin-Manuel Miranda13:02

Yeah.

Presenter13:44

It's time to go to the music. We're going to hear your third track. This is, again, this is one of the greatest living songwriters we have, Reuben Blades. And this is the album I remember most on my parents' vinyl collection. And the song is called El Padre Antonio Ismo Naguio Andres.

Presenter14:01

Padre Antonio Pereira, me no del Faña.

Presenter14:10

Cua la selvas yl esperanza de sero vizmo.

Presenter14:14

Yen truly lon, yen tros musquitos sablo de queristo en padre eno fusiona va en que el vaticano.

Presenter14:24

Re pampels and convici unado. Y fuan cuemple y tu enmedo ela nara dar sul sermo.

Presenter14:32

Cada semana, palos que busque in la salvación.

Presenter14:39

El Padre de Antonio y Sumonaghillo, Father Antonio and the Altar Boy Andres by Ruben Blades and Isés de Solar. Lynn Manuel Miranda, to what extent were you a show-off as a kid? I have seen a video of you cutting a rug to foot loose in your bedroom. Yeah, well, I think it's notable that I am alone in my bedroom. That is not really showing off so much as me showing off to a camera. My dad had an early camcorder that he brought home from work, and that became my life. I didn't have a lot of friends in my neighborhood, and so there's lots of videos of me making stop-motion animations with G.I. Joes and wrestling dolls because I have no other actors to play with. My parents both worked a lot. I've never known a time in my parents' life when either of them had only one job. It was almost like I saw them on weekends. And my sister was six years older, so she was into sort of teenagers and boys and not being home. So it was a life of the mind, is how I would describe it. I would never have thought of myself as lonely, but it was a lot of just playing around in my own imagination. And you attended Hunter College for Gifted Children. You've said I was a totally different child at school. Tell me about that. Yeah, well, I think that I.

Presenter15:55

I loved Hunter and I have now had sort of every phase there because I went there from kindergarten through 12th grade. And then my first job out of university was teaching English at Hunter. And then I was basically a professional substitute teacher until my first Broadway show at Hunter. So I love the school a lot. But as a kid, it's intimidating. You know, I was very aware that the kids around me were smarter and swimming in deeper waters than me. And so I learned a couple of things. I think I learned very quickly that funny is a currency. Then I was like, all right, I'm never going to be as good in math and science. I'm going to double down on this passion of mine. Film and theater, those are the things I love. And I'm just going to learn everything about them and be smart at that. You were also apparently enormously sensitive to music as a kid. How did that manifest itself? It manifested myself in me making an ass of myself in all kinds of situations because.

Presenter16:49

I would tear up and I would get very emotional over music. And I now realize that is a strength and a superpower. But as a kid, when your classroom is listening to Bridge Over Troubled Water and you're struggling to hold it together because you just think the song is so sad, it's tough. My parents tell a story of as an infant, I would start crying if it was a minor chordy type song. You just couldn't bear it. Couldn't bear it. Yeah, I remember being really upset about I Just Called to Say I Love You by Stevie Wonder. Which is not one of his sadder ones. I mean, it's not, except think of the lyric. No New Year's Day to celebrate. You know, it's no first of spring, no song to sing. I was like, this is horrible. I want Christmas. I want New Year's. I want spring. It's a list of things that they are taking away from you. And I wasn't mature enough to get to the turn, which is, but I love you.

Presenter17:49

But now you know it's a superpower one that you've harnessed?

Presenter17:52

Yeah, I think so. You know, like I said, my mom took me to all the heavy stuff growing up, and my dad took me all the light stuff. And I think that my work marries those two sensibilities. I try to so I think subconsciously, I write shows that both my parents will enjoy that are hopefully enormous fun, but then will also kick you in the heart when you least or most expect it. And I think that understanding music's unique ability to do that music is one of the only things that sort of

Presenter18:20

Pings off neurons on both hemispheres of your brain and does things to us chemically that we don't even understand. So I feel very lucky that I get to work with it for a living.

Presenter18:31

Let's hear some more music then. Time for your next track. Why have you chosen it?

Lin-Manuel Miranda18:33

Yeah.

Presenter18:35

Oh yeah, this is Passing Me By by the Farside, who are this incredible hip-hop group out of California. And it came along when I was like in seventh grade. And I'd always loved hip-hop. I'm a little younger than it. And I grew up just south of its origins in the South Bronx. I remember my sister taking me to the early hip-hop movies. And I would write raps with my friends like any child of the 80s would. And then I hear this song Passing Me By by the Farside in the middle of my puberty. And it is this song about getting passed over and that girl who doesn't notice you. And so it was my way in. It was like, oh, I'm allowed to write about the stuff that I'm insecure about. It was really revolutionary for me. And I'm crazy about their voices. This high-pitched voice you're going to hear is like, I think, what I've subconsciously been emulating when I rap my whole life.

Speaker 219:29

Now there she goes again, the dope is Ethiopian and now the world around me begins moving in slow motion whenever she happens to walk by. Why does the apple of my eye overlook and disregard my feelings? No matter how much I try. Wait, no, I did not really pursue my little princess with persistence. And I was so low-key that she was unaware of my existence from a distance. I desired her, secretly admired her, wrired her, a letter together. Anyways, my dear, my dear, my dear, you do not know me, but I know you very well. Now let me tell you about the feelings I've been warning when I try. Or make some sort of attempt. I simp. Damn, I wish I wasn't such a wimp. Cause then I would let you know that I love you so when I'm

Presenter20:03

Also ends on a verb. How great is that? I mean. Good morning, everybody.

Presenter20:07

The far side and passing me by. Lynn Manuel Miranda, fans of yours might already have seen that camcorder footage I mentioned of you as a kid filming yourself dancing in your bedroom, but you also said that your camera was a constant companion as you got a little bit older and started growing up. Why?

Presenter20:25

Uh

Presenter20:26

It's easier. It's easier to film something than to be a part of it. It's easier to film a conversation than have a conversation. And it really became a crutch for me in high school. I was the kid who brought the camera everywhere, and I was making movies with my friends, and it was enormous fun. I have footage of all these random moments in life. And I remember seeing Rent on my 17th birthday. It was my present from my high school girlfriend. And there's that fight between Mark and Roger where Roger says, Mark has got his work. They say Mark lives for his work. And Mark's in love with his work. Mark hides in his work. And Mark, by the way, is the character who has been holding a camcorder the entire play. And they say, he says, you pretend to create and observe when you really detach from feeling alive. And he's calling him out for using this video camera as a crutch to distance himself from his friends, who are some of whom are dying. And I felt called out in the back row of the mezzanine of the Niederlander Theater. And it's about as personal as a musical ever felt to me. That one moment. And I started writing musicals then and there because I love them. I love Gilbert and Sullivan, but I thought musicals were written by old white people. And that was the first time I saw a truly contemporary musical that took place now. It was about people who wanted to be artists, were scared of selling out, were scared of dying. I was scared of all those things. And I think that's when my career as a writer in musical theater began. Many of the subjects and the stories that fascinate you, I mean, Jonathan Larson, Bob Fossey, Alexander Hamilton, they have a common thread of the ticking clock. Tell me more about that.

Presenter22:07

Um

Presenter22:10

Well, it's true, isn't it? I mean, I think that it we all have that ticking clock, and you're marked by your awareness of it and how

Presenter22:21

Much you let it affect your day-to-day because it's true whether you notice it or not. But do you notice it? Oh, yeah, I notice it. And I'm very aware of it. And I think I am drawn to characters that are very aware of it. And I think I was aware of it at a pretty young age. One, part of it is just growing up in New York. You learn this sort of that guy looks dodgy. That's the smelly train car. Don't get in that one. You're kind of a little always on alert. And I also experienced death at a young age. My best friend, who I went to kindergarten with, died very young. It's one of those sort of terrible stories where each of the parents thought she was with someone else and she drowned in the lake behind their home. I have this memory of nursery school of just like six months of gray, of just like my friend who used to go to this class didn't go anymore. And I remember the morning my mother told me, when that hits you early, you're aware of the ticking clock earlier. J.K. Rowling put it beautifully with the notion of thestrals that she puts in Harry Potter: that only Harry and Luna Lovegood can see the horses that pulled them to Hogwarts because they've seen death. And so I saw thestrals early.

Presenter23:39

Let's hear some more music then. Time for your next track. Why have you chosen it?

Presenter23:42

This is one of my favorite songs of the past few years and has been a real balm to me. I think the chorus of it speaks to our moment.

Presenter23:53

Perfectly. It's one of the rare songs where I listen to it and I go, God, I wish I'd thought of that. The chorus goes, We've got to start looking at what we pretend we can't see. It will save us or it will break us. Well, you'll hear it. The other joy of it is that it was written by a young singer-songwriter named Ali Denin, who was my seventh-grade student when I taught at Hunter. I was her English teacher. There's a very small subset of about 50 to 75 kids who, if I hear the words, Mr. Miranda in the street, I know, oh, it's one of my kids. She was a great student, great poet. And, you know, she sent me this EP of songs. I was like, oh, great. My old student is writing songs. And I was not in any way prepared for how self-assured and brilliant her music would be. And so I'm in awe of this song every time I hear it.

Speaker 324:44

We've got to start looking in when we pretend we can't see

Speaker 324:49

It will save us, or it will break us.

Speaker 324:52

Ooooooooooooooooh

Presenter24:55

Stop telling yourself what you don't know.

Lin-Manuel Miranda24:59

Uh

Presenter24:59

Cause you know Uh

Presenter25:04

What do you know?

Presenter25:10

What You Know by Ali Deneen. Lynn Manuel Miranda, you wrote your first musical in the Heights at just nineteen. It opened on Broadway in two thousand eight with you in the lead and won four Tonies, an amazing achievement with your first musical. What did you find most difficult about making that journey, getting there to Broadway?

Presenter25:30

Patience. You talk about the ticking clock. I was so impatient for production that I think that if it were just me and not Tommy Kale, a far worse show would have made it to production first and I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you. I think the biggest thing is when you meet your collaborators that you want to work with early, that is such a huge advantage over the rest of the world. I know so many songwriters who are just waiting for that person to believe in them. I found that in Tommy Kale the week after I graduated college, and that is like a five-year advantage on everyone else because I found someone who I believed in and believed in me. And then we sort of found all these like-minded people together to make our first show.

Presenter26:18

Now, you've been called a genius by your dad on stage in Puerto Rico. We'll come to that later. Nice term. We'll come to that later.

Lin-Manuel Miranda26:24

Nice turn.

Presenter26:25

But also in a more official capacity as the recipient of the MacArthur Genius Grant. How do you feel about the term genius being applied to you? I mean, I've known too many geniuses, actual geniuses, to count myself among them. I think I work very hard. I think I'm talented. I do not think that is the same thing. But I was very grateful for it. And I just try to think of it as like a vote of confidence from the universe: keep going. Because if you start to take that seriously, if you start to wily coyote around and have cards printed that say super genius, that's pretty much when everyone gets to say, no, you're not. And I try to knock that pedestal out from under myself as often as I can. I mean, there is a cottage industry of tweets of someone quoting some dumb tweet I wrote, being like, MacArthur genius Lynn Miranda, and then some dumb thing I said, which is fine, because, you know, if you try to live up to that kind of word, you're setting yourself up and everyone else around you for like.

Presenter27:29

Disappointment'cause I'm human and I mess up all the time. What do your parents make of what you've achieved? Well, my mother will tell you I knew since he was in the womb that he was brilliant. You know, she tells this story about me kicking her in time to the music in utero. It gets younger in the pregnancy every time she tells it.

Lin-Manuel Miranda27:37

As in the

Presenter27:50

And the same with my dad. I think that, but my dad was just a lot more afraid. He was really just scared of it as a profession. But for all of that, they never missed a play. For all they worked, and as little as I saw them in my home growing up, they were always at the show if I was in a show. So they were sort of there when it mattered, and I'm really grateful for that. And they continue to be there. Let's hear some more music. This is your sixth disc. I think Regina Specter is a genius because everything that comes out of her could only come out of her.

Presenter28:19

And this is to me is a perfect pop song in that it is incredibly specific and then somehow has these depths of wisdom within it in a very real way. The first verse, which I don't think you're going to hear, is almost about the zombie apocalypse. Then the second verse, it's Regina Specter summing up life in these almost like zen cones, but they're brilliant. It's just a miracle of a song. You'll listen to it twice, because the digit is asleep.

Presenter28:52

Under radio, on the radio.

Presenter28:57

On the radio

Presenter28:59

On the radio

Presenter29:02

On the radio

Presenter29:19

Regina Spectre and on the radio. Lynn Manuel Miranda, in 2017, Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico. You visited the island not long afterwards. What did you find?

Presenter29:31

I found an island struggling with challenges no major American city has ever had to face and with less help. And so Puerto Rico was sort of doing it for themselves in a very real way. And I saw that in a first-person, I mean, one, the island of blue tarps when you're landing instead of roofs. But I also know it from my own aunt and uncle who were still there and lived on generators in their town for five months to have electricity at night. Wouldn't happen on the mainland. It just wouldn't. It was a sort of stark reminder of the colonial status of this island. It is an unincorporated territory of the U.S. Right. And also this horrible body count that we knew to be true and we knew to be much higher than the president who fixed it in his mind at 16 and refused to think about it again because we all knew someone who died. And so, you know, I think Puerto Rico is home to the most resilient people on the face of the planet for surviving that and everything after.

Lin-Manuel Miranda30:10

Uh

Presenter30:34

You've taken on a new role as a campaigner on behalf of Puerto Rico. There's a line in Hamilton, isn't there? History has its eye on you. Do you feel that? Well, yeah, and it's tough because I'm a very imperfect messenger. I did not grow up there. A month a year is not the same as growing up on that island. And so I really see it. My role with Puerto Rico as sort of a megaphone when it's needed. You took Hamilton back to Puerto Rico, and that was, I think, the moment that your dad got up on stage and said that you were a genius. How did that feel to perform that role on stage then? Oh, man. It was.

Presenter31:09

It was one of the toughest and yet most triumphant months of my life. Tough because the stuff that we're dealing with is all stuff Puerto Rico is dealing with. It is a colony struggling with what the hell it wants to be. And here is this show about a colony struggling with what the hell it wants to be. So on that level, it was very complicated. And yet, the audience reaction to my coming out on stage got longer every night. And I had a great moment. It was January 16th, which is my birthday. And we finished the matinee. And I got off stage and I took my wig off and I was like half naked. And the stage manager says, you have to go back out. They're not leaving. And they won't stop cheering. And I went back out in a bathrobe and like bowed. And the entire audience sang happy birthday. And I was a mess. I can't talk about it without crying. So just that level of.

Lin-Manuel Miranda31:24

Dealing with

Lin-Manuel Miranda31:59

Cheering

Presenter32:12

At that moment in Puerto Rico's history, they needed just a day of good news. And that's what Hamilton was sort of able to be. And I feel very grateful for that.

Presenter32:22

And the reception you know,'cause I I always felt like an outsider on the island. The embrace of it healed something in me that that I didn't know was incomplete.

Presenter32:34

Let's go to the music. This is your seventh. Tell me about it.

Presenter32:38

So he'd beto Santa Rosa. He'd be our Tony Bennett. He'd be your maybe like Anthony Newley. Just old school salsa crooner, brilliant improviser. And this was my first dance with my wife at our wedding. And he sang at our wedding. And he sang this song.

Presenter32:57

And so I have beautiful memories of just getting to see him sing this live full stop was a treat. Also, not stepping on my wife's very elaborate dress because dancing salsa as your first song is hard enough. It's harder when it's a wedding dress. This is going to be a fun song for your Sunday morning.

Lin-Manuel Miranda33:16

Ayamores pujitivos, a mor esteces perados, siestamore es vicastí.

Presenter33:26

Take me in some way.

Presenter33:28

Uh

Speaker 333:28

Uh

Presenter33:28

Uh

Speaker 333:28

Embark assemblies.

Speaker 333:30

Can be any sound

Speaker 233:33

Puer es la fruta prohibida del corazón su la tido. To quiero tener contigo, algo que ver en la vida.

Speaker 233:43

Can you listen?

Speaker 333:45

Remember that some

Presenter33:48

Dejete Querrer Let Yourself Be Loved by Hilberto Santa Rosa.

Presenter33:52

Lynn Manuel Miranda, you once said one of my biggest fears is regret. Have you been able to avoid it so far?

Presenter33:59

I can't avoid it entirely, but I have a real, I really have an allergy to sitting in it. I had a whole relationship that ended because I was dating someone whose conversational gambit was, should I have done this? Should I have done that? And it makes my eye twitch to think about it because you can only move forward. And so when I sit in regret for too long, I get very upset with myself. So I try to sit in it as long as I need to to learn what the mistake was and then keep moving because it's very painful. It's very painful when you do something that you wish you could take back. Can't take it back.

Presenter34:43

You are keeping moving filming the second series of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials at the moment. How's life in Cardiff? Life in Cardiff is wonderful. I think it's beautiful there. I have the advantage of having a four and a half-year-old son who is very much into knights and dragons. And yeah, so there's a castle every 50 feet. You guys have got him like we have rest stops in New Jersey. So it's joyous. I had a crew member on His Dark Materials ask me at the end of last season, well, what are you going to do for holiday? And I was like, no, no, no, no, no.

Lin-Manuel Miranda34:58

Perfect.

Presenter35:13

This is the holiday. Back in real life, I have a bunch of writing deadlines and movie projects and stuff I'm working on. Here, I get to be a cowboy in a hot air balloon for two months. This is the holiday. And does being there afford you a little more anonymity? Yeah, it really does. I love wandering around the mall in Cardiff. I think because I grew up in New York City, like a mall is still a very glamorous, cool thing. So I walk around St. David's, like, this is awesome. So I'm having a blast in Cardiff. It's great. It's time for your last disc. I'm very sorry to say, Lynn-Manuel Miranda. What's this one and why have you chosen it? This is Rosa Parks by the Immortal Outcast. I think Andre 3000 and Big Boy are the Lennon McCartney of hip-hop. And I could have picked any number of Outcast songs that mean the world to me. But I picked this song because it actually has a practical application in my life. I'm in this hip-hop improv group called Freestyle Love Supreme, and I have been performing with them since 2003. And one of our members, Utkarsh Ambutkar, aka UTK, has to sing the second verse of Rosa Parks before we get on stage. It's like his superstitious thing. He has to do it, otherwise, he can't get on stage. And so he always goes, I met a gypsy and she tipped me to some life game to stimulate and activate the left hand. And then all of us are like, right, brain. And we're all just finishing it because we know he's got to go through it before we get on stage. It's week is the last quote that I want to hear when I'm going down. When all said and done and they got a new Joe in town, when the record player gets a skipping and slowing down, all y'all can say is freestyle, earn that crown. All right, guys, have a good show. We have to do that before we get on stage. And I don't know why it's the second verse of Rosa Parks, but that is what that song means to me now. It means me and my friends about to go on stage with no plan, just suggested words from the audience, and 90 minutes later, we will have completed a show.

Lin-Manuel Miranda37:09

Quickens the blood. It does. Went and died. Went on out and bought it. Cause I thought it would be jamming. But examining all the floss kit. Wallskit, offlit. Sand and it's costlit. But that's all shit. Bro, and I hope I never have to float in that boat. Up shit, creep. It's sweet. It's the last quote that I

Presenter37:48

Rosa Parks by Outcast. Lynn Manuel Miranda, I'm about to cast you away to your desert island. Will you be homesick? I will be homesick. My shoulders unclench when I'm there. It's the blocks I know the best, and uh I'm at ease there, in a way I am nowhere else in the world.

Presenter38:07

You're a city kid. How will you get on in the wild? I mean, how practical are you? Can you build a shelter? It won't be great. I know the manifold uses of a coconut, but short of that, I'm pretty well done for. Maybe I'll get to listen to all these songs once before I perish.

Lin-Manuel Miranda38:12

It won't be

Presenter38:27

And how are you with solitude? I'm okay with solitude, especially with music. And I'm not worried about that part of it. I think of a desert island, and I think of the end of that Twilight Zone episode, time enough for now, when the guy survives the apocalypse and suddenly he has time to read all the books he's always wanted to read. I just hope my glasses don't break. I'd make use of it. I'd be writing it all down.

Presenter38:49

Well, we will give you a few books to take with you. You've got the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare, and you can have another. What would you like it to be? I picked Moby Dick by Herman Melville, because it's my wife's favorite book. I loved it because it was such a glimpse.

Presenter39:02

Inside her brain. As soon as I started reading it, I understood why she loved it so much. It is someone using every fact at their disposal to try to explain the unexplainable. And my wife is a very logic-based person, and yet it has all the poetry and the gorgeous language that is also what she is in love with. So, to me, reading Moby Digg would be the closest thing to having my wife with me since I can't take my wife with me. You can also have a luxury item to help you pass the time on the island. What'd you fancy? So basic. And I wonder how many times in the long history of this show you've gotten this, but just coffee. I just need some coffee. I love milk and sugar if you'll allow it. Sure. Grant. Just as you like it, an inexhaustible supply. I'll take it. It's yours. Last, I think the most difficult question for you: if you had to choose just one track of your eight to save, what would it be?

Lin-Manuel Miranda39:41

Great.

Lin-Manuel Miranda39:44

Yeah.

Speaker 339:44

I'll take it.

Presenter39:52

This is really hard, and my first instinct was cabaret. But I actually think if I'm alone on that island, I'd pick Ali Danine because it would give me hope. And I'm gonna hope's gonna be in short supply on my island with coffee. Lynn Manuel Miranda, thank you so much for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you. It's been a thrill.

Presenter40:21

As we leave Lynn Manuel to listen to his music, sopping his endless supply of coffee, let me take you back to nineteen ninety nine, when another Titan of musical theatre was cast away, Andrew Lloyd Webber. Sue Lawley interviewed him and asked him about the beginning of his partnership with Tim Rice.

Presenter40:38

He wrote to you in nineteen sixty five, shortly before you went up to university, and I quote Dear Andrew, I have been told you're looking for a with it writer of lyrics for your songs. I wonder if you consider it worth while meeting me. Wonderful. Can you recall your first meeting?

Lin-Manuel Miranda40:52

I can indeed. I can recall the first time I met Tim. I mean this very, very tall, very blonde, rather I mean, very skinny in those days. Um guy arrived at the sort of the door looking like some kind of a donut. We we really got on more or less as as sort of friends and talking about pop. Um it wasn't for a few months before we actually decided to start work um on an actual musical together.

Presenter41:12

But you went off to university, I think, a few months later, and as I say, came down after a term. In a sense,

Lin-Manuel Miranda41:18

I realized that there was nobody there who had a candle to Tim's lyric writing ability.

Presenter41:23

Really?

Lin-Manuel Miranda41:24

That was the thing. I mean, I basically left Oxford for Tim.

Presenter41:24

Yeah.

Presenter41:27

So Tim, in fact, as you said earlier, moved into the South Ken flat and the partnership began. And within two years you'd written Joseph. Now how did that come about?

Lin-Manuel Miranda41:35

Well, there was a guy who actually taught my brother called Alan Dogget, who was the schoolmaster, and that he wanted a piece for an end-of-term concert. It was twenty minutes long, Joseph, in those days. It was done on a wet Friday afternoon to a bunch of rather bored parents. But it went well, and so we did it again. And the critic of the Sunday Times, it transpired, now this is where luck does come in, had a child at the school. And of course, the Sunday after that, we read this rave review for Joseph saying that Tim and Andrew were the new writers. And of course, we couldn't believe it. And so immediately we got an offer to write. And so that's how we got going.

Presenter42:15

And also uh music publishers I think in the meantime bought Joseph from you. How much did they give you for that?

Lin-Manuel Miranda42:20

Oh, they paid a hundred pounds for it.

Presenter42:22

And in nineteen ninety one you bought it back.

Lin-Manuel Miranda42:25

Vermillion.

Lin-Manuel Miranda42:26

I tell you that was cheap.

Presenter42:29

Andrew Lloyd Webber, bringing back memories for many of us of performances of Joseph and his technical Adream Codes. You'll also find Tim Rice's edition of Desert Island Discs in our back catalogue along with many other composers on BBC Sounds or via our website.

Presenter42:44

Next time, my castaway will be Baroness Arminka Helic, who arrived here as a refugee from Bosnia in 1992. Do join us.

Speaker 343:04

Doctor Rouger persuaded millions of people to join her financial revolution, and then she disappeared.

Speaker 343:13

One of Europe's richest women, someone who looks set to change the world, had vanished into thin air.

Speaker 343:21

I'm Jamie Bartlett and for the last six months I've been on the hunt to try to find the missing Crypto Queen. And it gets far weirder than I thought possible.

Speaker 243:31

Kidnapping, kidnapping, killing, all those from the traditional bank. This is the trick that they do.

Speaker 343:38

It's very col like

Lin-Manuel Miranda43:39

It starts to get very, very, very scary, very, very, very fast.

Speaker 343:44

Subscribe to The Missing Crypto Queen on BBC Sounds.