Lin-Manuel Miranda is about to make history: If the 27 of March wins the Oscar for best original song for “Dos Oruguitas”, will enter the select group of so-called EGOT, people who have won an Emmy (television), a Grammy (music) , an Oscar (cinema) and a Tony (theater).
“I remember that, when my first musical premiered, I thought: ‘it will be successful or it won’t be, but then I return to my normal life’ and… I never came back“, explains the composer, director and playwright of Puerto Rican origin in an interview with Efe.
So alone 16 people count on that EGOT, the “grand slam” of the arts in the United States. Rita Moreno is the only Latina who has achieved it.
Miranda (New York, 1980) entered the entertainment world by stepping on Broadway with two musicals, “In the Heights” and “ Hamilton”, which accumulated 16 nominations for the Tony Awards, the highest distinction on the theatrical circuit .
“With ‘In The Heights’ we were on Broadway for almost 3 years and I was famous in my neighborhood, the street 46 and in Puerto Rico“, remember.
“And with ‘Hamilton’ it changed my whole life“, he adds.
The two stories celebrated the immigrant experience in the United States, they infected their characters with Latino pride and they shared with the public the lives of people who left their homes to look for a new opportunity.
“It was my way of ensuring a life in this world that I wanted , because there was only ‘West Side Story’ and that was all” sign the.
Yes his stories worked, Miranda would accept the responsibility of “giving more opportunities to our artists, to our people, to Latinos.”
“Hamilton” popularized the biography of one of the founders of EE .USA, Alexander Hamilton, the first US Secretary of the Treasury, a man who was born in 1757 in the Caribbean, poor, without family and emigrated to New York until he became the first Secretary of the Treasury of the North American country.
When in 2015 the Government wanted to replace Hamilton’s face on the banknotes of 10 dollars, the popularity of the musical stopped the plans.
“In The Heights”, his first work, narrated the life of the Manhattan neighborhood where Miranda grew up, Washington Heights, a little piece of the Caribbean in the Big Apple.
He wrote it as a musical in 2002 and, this summer, almost 20 Years later, its film adaptation was released.
“The story came from a fear that told me ‘if I don’t write these characters, they won’t exist’”, he maintains.
A ROUND YEAR IN HOLLYWOOD: “CHARMING”, “IN THE HEIGHTS” and “TICK, TICK… BOOM!”
For Miranda, the leap from Broadway to Hollywood has been a tall one.
In the same year he has released four different projects: the film “Tick, Tick… Boom!” as director, the adaptation of “In the Heights” as producer and actor, and the animated films “Vivo” and “Encanto” as composer of its soundtrack.
“This summer I took my first vacation with my wife in 13 years”, assures the musician.
Although the break did not last long, because when he returned to the United States he discovered that one of the songs he composed for “Encanto”, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno”, had become a worldwide phenomenon.
“I received an e-mail from a friend I met at university, but from whom I did not I had heard about in 15 years -he remembers-. And it was a video of his daughter singing the song for days and days and days”.
AUTHOR OF THE BIGGEST DISNEY HIT IN THREE DECADES
a few weeks, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” took the number one spot on Billboard Hot 100 , the main music popularity chart in the United States.
From 1993, with “A Whole New World” tape “Aladdin”, no other Disney song had achieved it.
The theme, that talks about the taboo topics of a family, has crossed borders with a virality among children that has not been seen since the famous “Let it Go” from “Frozen”, although it will not compete for the Oscar because Disney decided to present the ballad as a candidate “Dos Oruguitas”, sung in Spanish by Sebastián Yatra.
It will be this song that will give Miranda the key to the EGOT club, but he has another prize that is almost more inspiring, that of receiving messages of gratitude when there are Latino actors who and they find him and they say that they found work with his characters.
“I take that very seriously”, he affirms .
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• “We don’t talk about Bruno”, theme from the movie “Encanto”, reaches number 1 in the Hot 46 Billboard
• Disney’s ‘Charm’: Song ‘ We Don’t Talk About Bruno’ beats ‘Let It Go’ from ‘Frozen’
• Sebastián Yatra exclusively after receiving the news that ‘Dos Oruguitas’ is nominated for the Oscar Awards 2015