Lin-Manuel Miranda Did Our Puppy Interview And I'm A Better Person After Watching It

Lin-Manuel Miranda: I'm excited for audiences to see the continuing adventures of Mary Poppins, to see Jane and Michael Banks all grown up, and Marc Shaiman and Scott Whitman's incredible songs. I feel like the best thing they did was get the biggest superfan of the original film – Rob Marshall — to direct it because I think that everything in here will make fans of the original very, very happy.

LM: I think the dancing. I think I was pretty daunted by "Step In Time!" in the original and we've got a number that's about as long and as elaborate as that. It was the last thing we filmed and it was about six months of rehearsal for it. At the same time, the level of mastery — going from just learning how to swing around a lamppost and then suddenly you're holding a flaming stick and there are BMX bikers all around you — getting to that level mastery was pretty satisfying.

LM: Oh, they're totally different skill sets. Acting on stage is a yoga! It's seven times a week [or] eight times a week and you're gonna hit the same marks every night, but the audience changes your performance, your energy that day changes your performance, and your relationship to your fellow actors. On screen, you're never coming back to Buckingham Palace, you're never coming back to Big Ben so the adrenaline comes from knowing that that's your chance to get it right.

LM: Brooklyn Nine-Nine — it's my favorite show.

BuzzFeed: Do you think that's gonna happen?

LM: I hope so! I'm glad NBC picked it back up.

LM: You know, we're still very much in the script development phase on The Little Mermaid. If there needs to be a new song, I'm happy to write lyrics for Alan Menken, but if there doesn't need to be, I won't write it because that score is perfect.

LM: Oh! That's a fantastic question — I don't know the answer to that question either. You know, my favorite character was always Sebastian. He's really just a misunderstood composer [laughs]. Everyone forgets that but he's the court composer and suddenly he's babysitting the 16-year-old and man, that's so relatable to me.

LM: "Total Eclipse to the Heart" and/or "I Would Do Anything For Love But I Won't Do That" — it's very indulgent to take the mic for seven minutes.

LM: [Laughs] What would I say? I would say, "It's a long story. You're gonna be mad about some of this, and maybe some of it you will like, but I had you winning against Jefferson a lot!"

LM: Oh, that changes every day. It's funny, right now I'm relearning all of my lines because I'm getting ready to play Hamilton in Puerto Rico. The one that's really fun for me, that I'm proud of right now because I'm relearning it, is "Farmer Refuted" where Hamilton is literally rhyming at the same time as Samuel Sansbury while he's verbally destroying him.

LM: Yeah, sure we will. Well, there's two things. We filmed the original company about a week before the first cast members started leaving and Tommy Kail made an amazing movie out of it and we stuck it in a vault and it's in a basement somewhere. So at some point, you'll see that. So if you have an obnoxious friend who's bragging, "I saw the original company." You know what? That brag is gonna be out of use at some point. You will see them, we just haven't decided when. I want as many people to get to see it live in the original format in which it was intended — in the theater — before we release it. But we've got it — it's in Gringotts vault.

LM: I'm much more zen about rejection because now I've been on the other side of the audition table and I realize how little of it has to do with your talent and how much of it has to do with the very specific needs of that casting director or that director in that moment. So, you can't take it personally because you might be the wrong height, you might have the wrong hair color. The other thing I will tell people is that you have to think of auditioning as the job. It's not getting the job — auditioning is the job. If you get the job, great! But auditioning is actually the job.

LM: No, I don't at all. I remember I rhymed it with "my uncle, he's a janitor." That was one where the creators of the show basically wrote, "And then Lin does an incredible sixteen bars about Canada and rhymes it perfectly" and left it up for me to write. So, that was a fun assignment. It was really fun — I love those guys.

LM: Oh, I'm as messed up and broken inside as much as everybody else. But I am well aware that you get what you put out into the world. So, I try when I'm tweeting — which is a terrible addition of mine — to just try to put out what I'd like to see. I read the same news articles as you, I see the same horrors, I wake up with the same morning breath but I try, if I'm having a terrible day, not put the terrible out into the world.

LM: What's the puppies' name?

BuzzFeed: Guppy.

LM: Oh my goodness. I'm holding Guppy. I'm getting licked by a real cute puppy. Oh wow, wow we are just jammin'. Jesus though, his breath smells like salmon. Now he's bitting up on my finga. Doesn't really hurt, I will not let it linga. He's got puppy teeth and they are not sharp. I will not go to heaven, I am not playing a harp. You can gnaw on that, it does not hurt my pinky. After this, I'll have a big gin and tonic drink-y.