Lin-Manuel Miranda: Entertainment industry interns should be paid living wage

Lin-Manuel Miranda has said the “iniquities” in the entertainment industries should be tackled by ensuring interns receive a living wage.

The actor and Hamilton creator made the comments during a session at the Edinburgh TV Festival where he shared tips on how young people can forge a career for themselves in the performing arts.

He said people should be “attacking those iniquities” in theatre, television and film.

“A lot of the ways folks get legs up in the theatre and TV industries and film world is internships, and if you can afford to not make money on an internship then you get to be in this world, and if you can’t then you don’t,” he said.

He said the industries should make sure a “living wage exists so that I can make a living doing the thing I love and I can also have the equal leg in, equal foot in the door”.

Miranda, 41, said there is a huge appetite for stories from a more diverse range of sources.

“People actually want stories they haven’t heard before and that only comes when we have a chorus of voices… that we haven’t heard or seen before,” he said.

Social media and the internet also means “the sky is kind of the limit” for people trying to break into the industry, he said.

However he said he is glad social media was not around when he was growing up because he would have been “accidentally famous for lip-syncing Footloose in my room at age 10”.

He added: “If you want to make movies and you want to make stuff that takes more folks around you to make, you may want to wait a tick before you post them online because the internet is forever.

“That is the double-edged sword of social media and all of these content creating apps.”