Julie Oh, a producer on the film who has been working to make Tick, Tick.Boom! since seeing a three-person stage production in 2014, explains that finding the right actress to play Susan wasn’t as simple as just casting an ingenue. There was something really beautiful and sad about Susan that I identified with.” Every person can relate to being that someone who loves an artist but hasn’t had the opportunity to fully have a relationship with them, because their art is their first love. “After reading the script learning more about Susan, I saw myself within her. “I was definitely a fan of Jonathan Larson, and so when this came along, I just dove into it,” she says. (A Variety review calls the film “playful and energetic.”) Credit for that, of course, is due to Miranda-who, despite being involved with seemingly everything, is making his debut here as a feature director-and the work of Larson and screenwriter Steven Levenson, but the success of the project is also thanks to a cast including Andrew Garfield as Larson, Shipp as Susan, the dancer whose romance with the composer complicates her efforts to follow her own path, Judith Light as a fast-talking talent agent, and notable turns from Mj Rodriguez, Joshua Henry, and Robin de Jesús, among others.įor Shipp, a Rent fan who had never seen Tick, Tick…Boom!, the role was immediately appealing.

Miranda’s movie is part biopic of a theatrical titan who died too young, part time capsule of a creative, grittier New York in the 1990s, and-thanks in part to some knowing winks at the Stagedoor Manor types who’ll be streaming the movie on repeat-a celebration of the messy business of making art. To see the finished film, though, one might never know. Miranda, you can't sing because of droplets.’ This poor guy had to tell Lin-Manuel Miranda every day not to sing.

“And this one PPE officer would have to come up and be like, ‘Sorry, Mr. “Lin-Manuel is just this big, beautiful energy who comes on the set and is like, ‘Hello! We are going to do this today, and this today,’ kind of singing your narrations,” Shipp recalls. So, as an actor, I'm used to touching everything and thinking, oh, this is where Susan would put her coffee, but I wasn't necessarily able to because if I touched something, someone would come up and disinfect it.” The learning curve didn’t end there.

It was a little hard to wrap your head around I'd never worked like this before, no one had. “It was PPE, conversations about social distancing, and color-coding different zones for people. “It was a whole new show,” Shipp says over Zoom from Los Angeles. When Boom!-an adaptation of the late Rent composer Jonathan Larson’s semi-autobiographical musical-resumed filming in August of 2020, it was at the heights of the pandemic, which meant filming a movie, especially one that involves a large cast singing, was decidedly more complicated.

Picture this movie monologues