Nominated for best song Oscar, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s top priority is finding his mum an outfit for the red carpet
Having the chance to win an Academy Award, for How Far I’ll Go from Disney’s Moana, is a ‘dream come true’ for American actor, playwright, composer, and writer, who could add statuette to his Grammys, Tonys and Emmy
When Lin-Manuel Miranda was a 10-year-old kid with wild daydreams of Academy Awards success, he used to boast to his mother that he was going to bring her as his Oscar date.
So Tuesday was a big day for mum Luz Towns-Miranda, as her son was nominated for his first Oscar as composer of the best original song How Far I’ll Go from Disney’s Moana.
Good as his word, Miranda is already focusing on making sure his mother looks great on the red carpet.
“We gotta get my mum a dress. I’ve promised her she was coming with me to the Oscars since I was 10,” Miranda says. “Obviously the first priority is getting my mum looking nice. I can wear any old penguin suit.”
The Hamilton creator found out about the big Oscar news while wearing a “period 1930s costume” on the top-secret set of the live-action Mary Poppins he’s filming in London – “that’s about all I can say about the set without the non-disclosure police coming after me”, Miranda says.
But he adds that he was chilling out after a tough morning of rehearsals in his dressing room, watching the Roger Federer Australian Open tennis match he had recorded.
“I’m bad at time zone maths. So I wasn’t sure when the nominations would be,” says Miranda. “So I was eating my tandoori chicken and watching Federer and my phone started vibrating off the table. That’s how I found out.”
Walking on set, he was met with a big congratulatory hug from Mary Poppins herself (Emily Blunt), “she was one of the first people to grab me”. There was hugs all around. And then Miranda says he finished his tandoori chicken and got back to work on Mary Poppins. “I was singing and dancing the rest of the day.”
The nomination puts Miranda in rare company, one of the few actors who could win the coveted EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards). Miranda has one Emmy, two Grammys and three Tonys. He first won a Tony in 2008 and a Grammy in 2009 (both for his Broadway hit In the Heights.) He won a Primetime Emmy in 2014 for the music composed for the 67th Annual Tony Awards.
At 37, Miranda would be the youngest to win all four awards in the EGOT. But he doesn’t want to focus on that.
“I just feel very, very, very, very lucky,” says Miranda. “This is honestly a dream come true.”
Speaking while on the drive back to his London residence, Miranda says he plans to pop some champagne to fully celebrate. “I hope the champagne is not too strong,” he says Miranda, “because I’m going to sit in the bath with some Epsom salts, which is my ritual for when I get home on this movie. These days are really, really hard.”
