Just a Bunch of Fun Facts About Lin-Manuel Miranda, So You Can Impress Your Friends

Updated on Jan 6, 2019 at 3:30 PM

Lin-Manuel Miranda has had a very good 2018. Not only does he co-star in one of the year's biggest movies, Mary Poppins Returns, but the Hamilton mastermind also was honored at the Kennedy Center Honors and welcomed his second son this year! The multi-hyphenate has been a pop-culture staple for some time now, between his work on Hamilton, his music for Moana, and now Mary Poppins Returns. Even though you've almost definitely heard a few key facts about him, there's plenty more trivia that you probably don't know yet! From his musical inspirations to how he met his wife, here are some of our favorite facts about Miranda!

Miranda is best known for Hamilton, but it wasn't his first Broadway credit: he wrote and starred in 2008's In The Heights, about the Latino population in Washington Heights, New York.
He has a pair of lesser-known Broadway credits as well. He wrote the lyrics for 2011's Bring It On: The Musical and translated some lyrics into Spanish for the 2009 revival of West Side Story.
He's a published author as well! In October 2018, Random House released Gmorning, Gnight!: Little Pep Talks for Me & You, a collection of his viral daily inspirational tweets.
Miranda hasn't always been a professional writer; he spent some years as a substitute teacher!

Miranda famously got the idea for Hamilton while reading Alexander Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton while on vacation.
He debuted the first song — "My Shot" — at the White House Poetry Jam in 2009, hosted by President Obama. Miranda introduced the song, to giggles from the audience, as being about "an embodiment of hip-hop culture: Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton."
In 2016, as the Obama administration came to a close, Miranda returned to the White House with the Broadway cast of Hamilton to perform again and bring the show full circle. President Obama also lent his voice to a 2018 remixed version of the musical's song "One Last Time."

Miranda married his wife, Vanessa Nadal, in 2010; the couple first met in high school.
According to him, he had a crush on her for years but couldn't muster up the courage to talk to her: "She was gorgeous and I'm famously bad at talking to women I find attractive. I have a total lack of game."
The Mirandas have two sons: Sebastian (born in 2014) and Francisco (born 2018).

Miranda started the #Ham4Ham "preshow" at Hamilton on Broadway: while fans waited outside for the daily ticket lottery, he and guests (show cast members, other Broadway stars, and more) would come outside and perform something fun, whether a Broadway show throwback or a role-reversed song from Hamilton or something else entirely.
Seeing Hamilton became something of a pastime for celebrities, meaning that Miranda got to meet a ton of Hollywood, music, and political figures. But he missed out on performing the night Beyoncé and Jay-Z attended the show — not for lack of trying! "I was pulling the I.V. out of my arm, I had a fever of 104, and my wife was like, 'Stay in bed.' I was like, 'I can do it, I can do it.' You just couldn't miss because it was like the internet came to the show every night."

Both of Miranda's Broadway musicals have been the subject of PBS documentaries: In The Heights: Chasing Broadway Dreams in 2009 and Hamilton's America in 2016.
Miranda cites Jonathan Larson, creator of Rent, as a formative influence, after seeing the rock musical on his 17th birthday. "Jonathan Larson connected the dots in musicals — that this thing you love can reflect the world in which you live. I loved musicals. But they never reflected the world in which I lived. It was just a separate thing I liked. He connected those dots for me, and I think I really started writing and felt like I could write a musical because of Jonathan Larson."
Miranda will be working with one of Larson's musicals soon: he's signed on to direct a film version of tick, tick . . . boom!, Larson's earlier and lesser-known off-Broadway musical.

Miranda has a group of collaborators he frequently works with, including director Tommy Kail, music director Alex Lacamoire, choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler. The quartet were honored as a group at the 2018 Kennedy Center Honors.
Several actors have appeared in multiple projects by Miranda: Christopher Jackson, Karen Olivo, Mandy Gonzalez, and Javier Muñoz are all among the names that tackled multiple roles.