Lin-Manuel Miranda expects the 2017 Oscars to jump from showbiz to politics and back.
Actors such as Meryl Streep and Mahershala Ali have taken the opportunity to express their opinions at awards shows in the wake of the bitterly fought presidential election which saw Donald Trump triumph to become the 45th President of the United States of America. But as the 37-year-old Tony award-winner pointed out in his cover interview for The Hollywood Reporter, politics has long been a part of the Oscars experience.
“My brain is a compendium of Oscar moments: Tom Hanks’ beautiful acceptance speech when he won best actor for Philadelphia in 1994, ” the writer and creator of hit musical Hamilton said to the outlet.
“Roberto Benigni climbing over chairs and wanting to make love to everybody in the world when Life Is Beautiful won best foreign-language film in 1999.
“Kim Basinger presenting in 1990 and telling the audience that one of the best films of the year, Do the Right Thing, was not nominated. For her to take a stand, 25 years before #OscarsSoWhite, was incredible — and impressive because time has shown the prescience of that film.”
And the first-time Oscar-nominee doesn’t expect the upcoming 89th Academy Awards to be any different.
“I expect we’ll see more of that this year,” he mused. “It’s a political time, so I imagine the Oscars will look exactly like your Twitter or Facebook feed. Why should we ignore for three hours what we’re talking about 24 hours a day?”
The New Yorker, who is in the running for the Best Original Song Oscar for his song How Far I’ll Go from Disney’s Moana, will be attending the ceremony on Sunday (26Feb17) with his mother and has fond memories of watching the broadcast with his family.
“One sort of unintentional tradition we had every year was during the ‘In Memoriam’ part of the show. My family called it the ‘She died?’ section because my dad, who is pop culture-oblivious, would always go, ‘She died? He died? She died?!’ the whole time,” he laughed. “So, it was very sad and yet also very funny watching my dad catch up.”
