At Monday night’s Broadway premiere of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s screen adaptation of Jonathan Larson’s uplifting and moving autobiographical musical tick, tick…BOOM!, performers who originated roles in Larson’s Pulitzer and Tony-winning posthumous hit Rent reunited to honour the late composer and writer 25 years after the first performance of that show. Daphne Rubin-Vega, who received her first Tony nomination for the role of Mimi Marquez was joined on the red carpet by Wilson Jermaine Heredia who won a Tony for playing Angel. Both actors make a brief, but memorable appearance in Miranda’s film which is now streaming globally on Netflix.
“That’s etched in stone. It’s unequaled history”, Daphne Rubin-Vega tells The Queer Review about her experience of being in Rent.
Talking about her reaction to being involved in the film, Rubin-Vega said that she was immediately “all in” with the idea, adding, “what a beautiful homage, what a beautiful tableau, what a beautiful self-reflective, kind of meta experience it is.” For Heredia, Miranda’s tick, tick…BOOM! takes “all the essence of what he was like and presents a clear picture of what he was about. Jonathan was all passion, Jonathan was all love. After watching the film I was reinvigorated all over again. I have no doubt that it will be successful and that it’ll reinvigorate a whole new generation of theater nerds!”
Recalling collaborating with Larson while workshopping the musical Rubin-Vega says, “it kind of became like a funny soundbite, the level of confidence and clarity he had. He knew how he wanted stuff. This guy was so talented, he was such an expert at what he loved and it wasn’t because of a certain pedigree, it was because of his passion and it’s really nice to know that I actually knew him.”
Watch the full interviews with Daphne Rubin-Vega and Wilson Jermaine Heredia below:
tick, tick…BOOM! is streaming globally on Netflix now.