Yesterday was Saturday Night Live’s first episode during his second term as president. So, of course, they started off the episode by tackling his frightening first week in office again.
They did that by taking it back to 1776, when the Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence. And if you do that, you need Alexander Hamilton. So, Lorne Michaels asked Lin-Manuel Miranda to reprise his most famous role 24 hours before the show went live. And the musical genius said yes.
And we are happy Lin-Manuel Miranda Cosgrove did because his appearance made a spot-on sketch even funnier! Especially when he broke. But he did try his best not to laugh. It was just too hard not to.
No matter what John Legend does, I will always love him because he wrote All of Me for his wife, Chrissy Teigen. And what woman would not dream of her husband doing the same?
Lin-Manuel Miranda also wrote a song for his wife, Vanessa, and we heard it in Hamilton.
Today, when the musical magician was on The Drew Barrymore Show to promote All In: A Comedy About Love, she wanted to know if he would ever write a romantic musical for his wife.
“Oh, they’re all for my wife, though. They all have been. I mean, the character in In The Heights is named Vanessa, for gd’s sake,” he told her. “But you know it’s fun. It’s really funny, actually, because there’s a song in Hamilton called That Would Be Enough. And there is no historical precedent for that song. It’s just Eliza saying, like I just needed to be here, like that’s all I need. And I wrote it in a hail of snot and tears. Like it was one of those songs I didn’t find it in a historical book. I just was like feeling it for my wife. And I wrote the song. And I played it for her; my wife is a lawyer, and she’s very even-keeled. So I play it just like and ‘That would be enough.’ And I serenade her, and she goes, ‘Good.’ Yeah. It’s kind of like you heartless monster. But that’s my little love song to her in the middle of that show.”
How sweet is that? And when you listen to the lyrics, you can hear that they are about him spending so much time writing his musicals. As long as he comes home to her, she is OK with him doing that. At least, he wrote that way for her.
Sweeney Todd just moved into the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on Broadway. It is located next to the Richard Rodgers Theater, where Hamilton is still going on. So Lin-Manuel Miranda, being the neighborly man that he is, thought he would invite his neighbors for a song, and they said yes.
So today, both casts got together and told the story of the Demon Barber of Fleet Street to the music of the Founding Father who was shot and killed in a duel gone wrong.
There really isn’t much to say except that it is brilliant. Josh Groban, AnnaLeigh Ashford, and everyone else who performed at today’s Ham4Ham hit it out of the park! Bravo! Bravo!
But I have to say, as a NYer who spent a lot of time on Broadway. I would be so pissed if traffic was blocked on Friday night because of this. Am I the only one who felt that way when they saw all of those fans on the street blocking traffic? So rude!
Lin-Manuel Miranda was on The Kelly Clarkson Show today, and they talked about Encanto again. He told her he met a kid named Bruno a week before the film came out. As soon as the boy told the EGOT his name, he apologized to the little guy.
I think the songwriter personally needs to apologize to anyone named Bruno or anyone who has heard the earworm of the tune.
BTW We Don’t Talk About Bruno almost didn’t happen. That is because the character’s name was originally Oscar. Too bad that name was so popular. Because otherwise, we wouldn’t all be singing the song for the rest of the day. I mean, We Don’t Talk about Oscar isn’t as catchy.
