Following the announcement that his musical Warriors will be coming to Broadway, Lin-Manuel Miranda stopped by The Tonight Show on Wednesday to discuss some of his latest projects.
During his visit, the Hamilton scribe spoke about Octet, the movie musical he is directing, adapted from Dave Malloy’s off-Broadway musical. The project recently wrapped filming with a star-studded cast of performers, including Rachel Zegler, Jonathan Groff, and Amanda Seyfried.
“I needed eight killer singer-actors,” Miranda explained, calling the movie “Avengers for theater kids.” He went on to share that Seyfried’s performance of “California” on The Tonight Show inspired him to pursue her for a part in the film.
“I’ve met actors who have been great in movie musicals, and then you meet them in real life and you realize, ‘Oh, they can’t really sing.’ But then Amanda came out here and did a really hard Joni Mitchell song on the dulcimer, and I was like, ‘Oh, she knows ball.'” Learn all about the new Octet movie in our guide here.
Miranda also teased the new song he wrote for the live-action Moana film, which is performed by Catherine Lagaʻaia and original voice actress Auliʻi Cravalho. “What we uniquely could do was write sort of a duet between the Moanas. So now OG Moana, Auliʻi, who’s a producer on the film, is singing a duet with our live-action Moana. She’s one of the ancestors now, and it’s really beautiful. It’s like Moana giving Moana advice.” Listen to the song here.
Watch the full interview, where Miranda looks back on his first film credit and talks about the current cast of Hamilton singing “New York, New York” after the Knicks won the NBA Finals.
