184 APRIL 2020 VOGUE.COM
“We’re two dancers of color who have
really put in our time and paid our dues,”
says Royal. “This is the moment when
we meet side by side, and I’m just thrilled
to be able to represent something that’s
going to be so much greater and will go
so much further. I’m envisioning the next
generation of people—dancers, sponsors,
supporters of the ballet—that are going to
see in this the possibility of what the arts
can do, and what we can do as artists.” @
THE DREAMERS
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 157
It’s a few weeks after the gathering
uptown, and the world beyond 809 Bar
& Grill has now seen the trailer. Set to
the title song—which Charles Isherwood
called “the most galvanizing opening
number in recent Broadway memory” in
his New York Times review of the origi-
nal production—the trailer has immedi-
ately become a bright spot of optimism
and exuberance as 2019 grinds to a close.
People have been posting videos of their
reactions to Twitter and Instagram, and
there are often tears involved.
In a midtown editing suite, I huddle
next to Chu as he shows me a few not-
quite-finished scenes of the movie, and
it becomes clear that the earnest emo-
tion with which the trailer was received
has been part of the making of the film
all along. “We cried literally every day,”
says Chu (also the director of Crazy Rich
Asians). “You talk to the neighborhood
extras, and they’re like, ‘Yeah, the only
thing that has ever shot here was Law &
Order, and it was a crime scene.’” During
“Breathe,” a song in which Nina strug-
gles to admit that she is about to drop
out of school, I feel—to my embarrass-
ment—that my eyes are prickling, too.
When the scene ends and the lights are
turned back on, I realize that all the peo-
ple in the tiny editing suite are sniffling. A
box of tissues is passed around.
The next day, a quiet Saturday morn-
ing, I meet Leslie Grace, who plays Nina,
at El Museo del Barrio in East Harlem.
She’s a vision in baby blue, wearing a
boatneck sweater and high-waisted linen
trousers in the same soft hue. She greets
me with a kiss on the cheek, and we walk
through a retrospective of Cuban artist
Zilia Sánchez called Soy Isla (I Am an
Island), casually chatting until a chil-
dren’s art class takes over the space and
we relocate to the museum’s café. She has
yet to see any scenes from the movie and
immediately grills me about what I’ve
seen, envious. I confess that her scene
made me cry.
“I really felt like I was living Nina,”
Grace remembers. The 25-year-old is
the only performer coming to the project
with no professional acting experience,
although she’s an established musician
who released her first record, of Christian
music, at the age of 14 before pivoting
to Latin pop. (She’s been nominated for
Latin Grammys and Billboard Latin
Music Awards.) “Nina’s the one that
nobody ever worried about because she
had straight A’s, was never in trouble,”
she tells me. Born in the Bronx to Domin-
ican parents, Grace was raised in Yonkers
and then South Florida after her family
moved there when she was 10, the young-
est in a mixed family of seven kids (“Yeah,
Brady Bunch family,” she says). Nina’s
New York story is nonetheless familiar
to Grace. Her mother once had a salon
two blocks from where the film was shot.
But she senses a larger resonance as well:
“When some of your crazy dreams are
becoming a reality, you see people in
your family looking at you with a sense
of hope. It’s amazing that you can be that.
But it’s also a big responsibility.”
When I speak to Corey Hawkins—
who plays Benny—on the phone from
L.A., he sees it similarly: “We all have
our different journeys. And all of those
journeys have led us to this point togeth-
er.” Hawkins, 31, grew up in Washington,
D.C., the son of a police-officer single
mother. He later studied at Juilliard after
a brief stint at an L.A. arts school that
proved too relaxed for his temperament.
(“It really made me nervous when every-
body’s so, ‘Oh, it’s all good. Everything’s
great. Just take your time.’ No! I need
to hustle.”) At Juilliard he overlapped
with Adam Driver, Orange Is the New
Black’s Samira Wiley (who lived down
the street from him when he was a child),
and Danielle Brooks (whom he describes
as his sister). He also saw In the Heights
while a student; it was the first Broadway
musical he’d ever seen.
The film for him is about “empathy,” he
says: “What is your tribe? What is home
for you? And what does that mean? How
does that reflect on the people that you
come in contact with and love?” He’s
excited about the film’s timing: “We made
this film to come out right before one of
the most important elections in modern
history,” he says. “How great that this
movie might actually impact an election,
that it might actually get people out to go
vote, even though it’s not saying, ‘Hey, go
vote.’ It’s saying, ‘Hey, we are all human,
and we’re all immigrants here. We’re all
sort of trying to find out what home is.’”
He adds, “And whose home is it?”
Despite any heavy implications
weighing on the minds of the cast, In
the Heights is an exuberant film, though
the breezy buoyancy of the film’s musical
numbers took work. “Panic attacks” are
the first words that come out of Barrera’s
mouth when she’s asked what it was like
to learn the choreography. During their
first rehearsal, the actors were thrown
in with the professional dancers, and
even Hawkins, who had legendary cho-
reographer and dancer Debbie Allen
for a mentor when he was growing up,
struggled. “This was comedy,” Ramos
remembers: “I go into rehearsal, and one
of the dancers, she’s looking at me like,
‘My man, I’m going to need you to keep
up because you’re making me look bad.’
” He breaks out laughing.
In one particularly ebullient scene, a
family celebration grew to include hun-
dreds of people—not only the dancers
and extras but neighborhood onlook-
ers as well. “When we shot this, I would
call, ‘Cut,’ and it would not cut,” Chu
remembers. “It went on for 10 minutes.
Lin was up on this fire escape, and the
people were just chanting, ‘Lin, Lin, Lin,
Lin, Lin, Lin.’”
“Nobody stopped that day. Everybody
was so into it. It was such an emotional
day,” Ramos remembers. “You feel like
your ancestors are watching. This is for
our ancestors’ ancestors.” @
SOMETHING IN THE AIR
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 158
It’s also a high-wire act. There is no
scenery; they are never offstage. “Bravura
performances,” said the U.K.’s Times
when the play was performed in London
last year. “A screen pairing whose wattage
shines even more brightly when experi-
enced live,” said The New York Times.
“They are two of the best actors of
their generation,” says Macmillan, who
also wrote the brutal addiction saga
People, Places & Things and adapted
George Orwell’s 1984 for Broadway in
- “I write for actors, and it’s a dream
to have these two, as they are completely
virtuosic.... They have something really
special.” For Matthew Warchus, artistic
director of the Old Vic and the director
of the BAM production, their easy rap-
port meant that they quickly found the
heart of the play. “There is nowhere to
hide,” Warchus says. “There is just you
and the audience. They have to be believ-
able and honest, truthful, authentic, and
barnstorming all at the same time.”
The pair first met when Foy had
already been cast as the queen in The
Crown, and Smith was brought in to
audition opposite her. “We were in this
tiny room—I don’t know why it was so
small. I was six months pregnant, and—
classic Matt—he only had two hours
