John Leguizamo says praise from Tony winner Lin-Manuel Miranda 'justified' his early work
He says hearing praise now from actors like Miranda justifies work to get here.
— -- In a recent profile in Vanity Fair, Lin-Manuel Miranda — the brain behind the Tony-, Grammy- and Emmy-winning phenomenon "Hamilton" — said it wouldn't have existed without John Leguizamo.
Leguizamo, who has starred in acclaimed films like "Carlito's Way" and voiced animated characters like Sid in the blockbuster "Ice Age" movies, knocked down walls for Latinos on Broadway with his one-man shows, Miranda said.
Leguizamo acknowledged Miranda's contributions in return.
While Leguizamo was working on his latest venture, "Latin History for Morons," currently playing at the Public Theater in New York, "Good Morning America After Hours" host Lynda Lopez caught up with him.
"I feel like my work was justified," he said of Miranda's praise. "I wasn't even in the theater with 'Mambo Mouth' [his first one-man show]. I was in a hallway, with 70 fold-up chairs ... and all of a sudden, there was Al Pacino, Arthur Miller, Sam Sheppard, Raul Julia."
"And somewhere, little Lin-Manuel Miranda," Lopez said, laughing.
"Mambo Mouth" was the beginning of an award-winning career for the motor-mouthed Leguizamo.
He had compliments of his own for the creator of the Broadway hit "Hamilton."
He said the modern telling of American history is a "sheer masterpiece."
"If [Miranda] would have pitched that to Hollywood ... it never would have happened," Leguizamo said. "'Wait a minute ... black and Latino actors playing the Founding [Fathers]? No. No. They didn't speak in rap in the 1700s!'"
In his new show, Leguizamo said, he sought to explore the unheralded U.S. history of Latinos, in part because his son, who is Jewish and Puerto Rican, was being bullied at school.
"He got picked on, and they would call him Mexican," he explained. "So I started really ... learning about our contributions to America alone."
"Latin people," he continued, "have fought in every single war that made this country, and our contributions are nowhere listed."
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