Most people have to pay hundreds of dollars to see Broadway darling Lin-Manuel Miranda break out into joyful song and dance. But a lucky ― and very confused ― group of Los Angeles commuters got treated to a whole lot more for free.
The “Hamilton” creator and star joined James Corden for a nearly NSFW rendition of his recurring “the Late Late Show” segment, “Crosswalk the Musical,” in which Corden and guests perform musical numbers in busy streets during red lights.
First, Miranda, Corden and a gang of hippies perform a psychedelic rendition of “Aquarius” from the 1960s musical “Hair.” The performance was groovy, but not quite authentic to the Broadway original.
“In the original production of ‘Hair’ the entire cast got naked,” Miranda said. “But both CBS and the state of California have told us we can’t be nude in the crosswalk. Then again, people told me that Alexander Hamilton wasn’t a Puerto Rican rapper with beautiful brown eyes.”
Miranda and Corden then proceed to perform the “Let the Sunshine In” portion of the song wearing nothing but glorious, floor-length robes, which they remove mid-song, revealing blurred-out genital regions obscuring what were actually nude briefs. Still, it was all very convincing.
“I’ve never felt so free!” Miranda says afterward, shaking his blurred out genitalia to and fro. Let the sun shine, indeed.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story stated James Corden and Lin-Manuel Miranda were naked during their performance, when they’d actually just used a bit of TV magic to look like they were.