Lin-Manuel Miranda says he talked Weird Al 'out of working' with him when they met: 'I really pooped the bed'
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Lin-Manuel Miranda is recalling the embarrassing way he threw away his shot at one day working with parody icon Weird Al Yankovic.
The Tick, Tick… Boom director revealed details about what he considers his disastrous first meeting with the "Eat It" singer years before he would cultivate his own success with the Tony-winning musical juggernaut Hamilton.
"Pre-Hamilton, [Weird Al] was looking to maybe write a musical, and he was meeting with writers," Miranda said in an interview on The Tonight Show on Friday. "So I took a meeting at his house in Hollywood and I drove there myself in a rented car."
But Miranda, who called Weird Al one of his greatest childhood inspirations, soon found his nerves kicking into overdrive. "It's like meeting Santa Claus, meeting Weird Al," he told Jimmy Fallon. "And I was so nervous that I, like, self-destructed."
That includes, apparently, suggesting that someone else was a better fit for the job. "Like, midway through it, I said, 'You know who you should work with? Bobby Lopez,'" Miranda said, referring to the songwriter whose credits include Frozen, Wandavision, and The Book of Mormon. "I was like, 'He's writing a show with the South Park guys [Trey Parker and Matt Stone]. They're funny. You're funny. You should write with them.' And, like, talked him out of working with me."
To this day, Miranda isn't quite sure what caused him to short-circuit during the encounter. "Some self-esteem thing happened to me. It's never happened before!" he exclaimed. "And I got in my car, and I was like the guy in Boogie Nights. I was like, 'You're an idiot. You're an idiot. Why did you do that?! Why did you do that?!'"
Kevin Winter/Getty; Tristar Media/Getty Weird Al Yankovic; Lin Manuel-Miranda
While the pair have forged a strong friendship since — so strong that Miranda teased he "might have a cameo" in Weird, Weird Al's upcoming biopic starring Daniel Radcliffe — the Encanto composer is very cognizant that their first face-to-face was a total dud.
"I really pooped the bed. It's amazing he's friends with me," Miranda joked. "Because the first time I was like, 'H-H-Hi.'"
Watch Miranda discuss the botched meeting — and how his 4-year-old son fell asleep during Hamilton — in the clip above.
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