Andrew Garfield and Lin-Manuel Miranda have revealed the pretty major risk they took in jumping in with the Spider-Man star slated to play the lead role in the big-screen adaptation of musical tick, tick… BOOM! – neither of them knew if he could sing or not.
The 38-year-old actor, who described the role of Rent composer Jonathan Larson as ‘the closest character I’ve ever played to myself’ was willing to put the work in and see though, after Hamilton creator Miranda also agreed to the same risk, having seen Garfield in a non-musical stage role.
At a roundtable for tick, tick… BOOM!, when asked by Metro.co.uk how the discovery of his voice, which isn’t publicly known about, happened, Garfield joked: ‘It wasn’t privately known either, FYI!’
He continued: ‘It was a voyage of discovery that, really, Lin began. I really owe it to Lin for having the foolishness maybe – or the foresight – to think that I could reach where I needed to reach in order to honour John.
‘But for me, I just felt so lucky and happy to just see where I could go, and I was given the time and the resources.’
Describing Miranda and his musical directing team as ‘onion peelers’ the Oscar nominee added: ‘They were all just peeling away the onion of whatever voice lives inside of me. And I got given the best and the best in the business, and the time that I needed to get to that place.’
Admitting that he’d ‘always wanted to learn how to sing’, Garfield described the experience as ‘blissful’ with Larson’s songs and credited Miranda as his ‘leader’.
‘[He was] basically telling me it’s so much about belief. It’s so much about believing that you’re able to, and that’s what actually starts to open the voice to allow it to go where it can go to.’
In The Heights composer Miranda shared his experience of seeing Garfield perform live.
‘I saw him in Angels in America at the National [Theatre] and I thought, “Yeah, that guy can do anything.” Then I finagled my way into a lunch with him, actually by agreeing to do an Angels in America moderated panel – it was their Tony’s season. I took Andrew out for lunch at the no-good sushi place – as he reminded me this morning – in Midtown, which will remain nameless, and I asked him if he could sing. He said, “When are you making the movie?” And I said, “Not for at least a year”, and he said, “Then I can sing.” And he expressed wanting to explore that thing that was untapped within him, that he had never actually tried to do that.’
He added: ‘And I know what I saw on that stage and I knew he could get it anywhere he wanted to go, so if he wanted to go there, he was gonna go there!’
Miranda also remembered how quickly his leading man overcame any initial hesitancy over singing during the initial workshop of the film, in respect for its musical theatre roots.
Having initially got the ‘warning light’ that Garfield wouldn’t be singing during the first week, Miranda continued: ‘I was like, “I don’t want you to sing this week, you don’t have to sing this week, there’s no pressure to sing, you haven’t done the work yet.”‘
However, when the cast got together in the room, the 41-year-old recalled noticing a change in Garfield.
‘I sang on his behalf at the first one, and I could just feel him straining! At lunch, I said, “Andrew you’re dying to sing, so let’s just circle three moments that we’ll just do, and it could just be happy birthday at the end, but let’s just bit by bit…” and then every workshop, he sang a little more and a little more and then succeeded beyond our wildest dreams – and the proof is in the movie.’
Tick, tick… BOOM! is out now in select cinemas and lands on Netflix on November 19.
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