Lin-Manuel Miranda Lives a 'Star Wars' Dream, Gets His 'Yoda' On With 'Weird Al' Yankovic

‘Weird Al’ Yankovic and Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda bonded this weekend over their love of Star Wars… in front of 6,000 people at New York’s Radio City Music Hall. The cameo was a surprise treat for fans at the sold-out show, where the Broadway favorite belted out the chorus of the 1985 song “Yoda” (a parody of The Kinks’ “Lola,” sung from the perspective of Luke Skywalker in The Empire Strikes Back). Watch the full performance above, with Miranda coming in around the 2:39 mark (or cut right to Miranda’s cameo here).

On Twitter after the concert, Miranda shared the photograph below, along with a memory of seeing ‘Weird Al’ at New York City’s Beacon Theater with friends when he was in ninth grade. “We screamed ‘Yoda!’ It was @alyankovic’s encore,” wrote the musical theater star. “We truly believed our screams made ‘Yoda’ happen. It was, at that point, the best moment of my life. Today was a VERY close second.”

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Lin-Manuel Miranda backstage with ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic. (Credit: Twitter)

The following morning, Miranda (whose Star Wars fandom led him to a gig writing alien music for The Force Awakens) described the experience using a Harry Potter analogy. “You guys I am just watching this footage of last night like Harry in the Mirror of Erised,” tweeted Miranda (referring to the mirror that shows the “deepest, most desperate desire of our hearts,” according to Harry’s mentor Albus Dumbledore).

Other celebrity guests at Yankovic’s show included Tina Fey, Taran Killam, and Michael Ian Black. In fact, Black joked that the concert was more impressive than Miranda’s Pulitzer Prize-winning musical. “Saw “Hamilton.” Seeing Weird Al,” he tweeted. “Weird Al is more star-studded (and @Lin_Manuel was at both).”