Lin-Manuel Miranda’s forthcoming adaptation of Octet—the 2019 a cappella musical written and composed by Dave Malloy (Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812)—has a cast, and an exceptionally starry one at that.
On Tuesday morning, almost two weeks after announcing the project (for which Malloy will write the screenplay), Miranda revealed who will play the eight members of the internet-addiction support group at the musical drama’s center. A sign-in sheet from the first day of rehearsals spelled it all out: The film—Miranda’s sophomore feature as a director, following Tick, Tick... Boom! (2021)—will star Amanda Seyfried as Jessica, Rachel Zegler as Velma, Sheryl Lee Ralph as Paula, Phillipa Soo as Karly, Gaten Matarazzo as Toby, Jonathan Groff as Henry, Tramell Tillman as Marvin, and Paul-Jordan Jansen as Ed.
Asked what qualities the performers—a merry mix of film, television, and theater actors, including two of Miranda’s former Hamilton castmates—have in common, Miranda tells Vogue in an email that what he wanted in his cast was not only “extensive singing experience but choir experience.” He adds: “You have to not only be able to step into the spotlight for your solo but also love supporting the person in the spotlight.”
Praising the ensemble that director Annie Tippe put together for Octet’s original Off Broadway production at Signature Theatre—Adam Bashian, Kim Blanck, Starr Busby, Alex Gibson, Justin Gregory Lopez (with whom Miranda had done an early Hamilton workshop), J.D. Mollison, Margo Seibert, and Kuhoo Verma—Miranda notes that he “wanted to build and work with an octet of my own, and I couldn’t be more grateful for the company we’ve been able to assemble for the film—Amanda, Rachel, Sheryl, Pippa, Groff, Tramell, Gaten, Paul-Jordan. We have eight unicorns.”
On returning to filmmaking five years after the release of his directorial debut—a critical success, Tick, Tick... Boom!, starring Andrew Garfield as composer and lyricist Jonathan Larson, earned Garfield an Oscar nomination for best actor—Miranda says: “Because of the hundreds of decisions you’re making every day as the director—everything from the aspect ratio to your casting decisions to when your gut tells you you’ve got the shot—the movies you make end up being somehow more personal than your writing.”
That proved as true for him on Tick, Tick... Boom!—effectively the story of an artist in his 20s trying to make it in musical theater—as it does now. “There’s a lyric in Octet that goes, ‘When we say “in real life” / This is a lie to protect us / It is all real / It is all real life,’” Miranda shares. “So much of Octet speaks to things I struggle with every day. I didn’t write it, but it’s still intensely personal.”
His chief preoccupation in this first week of rehearsals? To “get the music in the cast’s brains and in their bodies,” Miranda says. “Then we can really start to play. I come in with a lot of ideas but not all the answers—those we’ll find together and hopefully make something none of us could have made alone.”