Mary Poppins Returns’ Lin-Manuel Miranda Reveals His Character’s Link To The Original

Due to Disney’s current mood for embracing the past, the House of Mouse will soon give us a (very) belated sequel to the 1964 beloved classic Mary Poppins. Titled Mary Poppins Returns, it’ll feature Emily Blunt taking over from Julie Andrews as the practically perfect magical nanny. In place of her cockney chimney sweep pal Bert (Dick Van Dyke) is Jack, a street lamp-lighter played by Hamilton star Lin-Manuel Miranda.

While speaking with Entertainment Weekly in a recent interview, Miranda revealed that Jack isn’t just inspired by the character of Bert, but has a connection to him within the storyline of the film. That’s because Jack was an apprentice chimney sweep to Bert when he was a boy. Miranda went on to explain that he’ll also share Bert’s love of going on “jolly holidays” with Mary.

“The magical is commonplace, at least to a couple of people like Mary and Jack, similar to the way it was to Mary and Bert. It’s almost like, ‘Well, yeah, we’ll just jump into the painting and spend the day in the painting, because why wouldn’t we do that?’ They’ll say, ‘Come on, we have a very busy day,’ and that busy day involves dancing with penguins and flying. That’s the thrill of it.”

This news comes soon after we learned more about the characters of Jane and Michael (Emily Mortimer and Ben Whishaw, respectively). The pair were children in the first film, and are now adults with their own families. Both of them are struggling to hold their lives together in different ways when Mary Poppins returns to save the day and brighten their spirits.

Mary Poppins Returns also stars Meryl Streep, Colin Firth, Angela Lansbury and many more. Rob Marshall (Into the Woods, Chicago) is behind the camera and the film is set to fly (via umbrella) into cinemas on December 25th, 2018.