TV/Film

Lin-Manuel Miranda and Eisa Davis have chosen their fighters for the cast of their WARRIORS musical album, tapping Marc Anthony, Luis Figueroa, Flaco Navaja and Chris Rivers to lend their voices to the project.
As revealed Thursday (Aug. 15), Anthony will star as Tato on the LP, while Figueroa is locked in to play Miguel. Navaja will portray Jesús and Rivers receives billing as “The Bronx.” Additional voices will be announced “very soon,” according to a release.

WARRIORS will feature 26 tracks following the members of a fictitious New York City gang who are framed for the murder of a respected gang leader named Cyrus. The album was inspired by the cult-classic 1979 film The Warriors — which stars Michael Beck, James Remar, Deborah Van Valkenburgh and Marcelino Sánchez — as well as the movie’s source novel by Sol Yurick.

Trending on Billboard

“We’ve spent the past three years musicalizing the Warriors’ journey home, from the South Bronx to Coney Island,” said Miranda and Davis, who co-wrote the album, in a joint statement. “Along the way, we’ve gotten to work with a lot of our favorite artists, and we’ll be announcing their roles on the album in the weeks ahead. We can’t wait to share these songs with you on Oct. 18.”

As previously announced, Grammy Award winner Nas is on board as executive producer, bringing his New York City roots to the table. Plus, Grammy winner Mike Elizondo takes the helm as producer.

WARRIORS marks just the latest high-profile musical project created by Miranda, who found global fame in 2015 for writing and starring in the Broadway musical Hamilton. The following year, its cast recording won a Grammy for best musical theater album and became the first-ever Broadway cast recording to be certified Diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America, while its follow-up project, The Hamilton Mixtape, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in 2016.

Later, the Tony winner wrote and produced the soundtracks for the Disney films Moana and Encanto. The former made history for weeks spent at No. 1 on Billboard’s soundtracks chart, while the latter topped the Billboard 200 for several weeks.

Davis is also a prolific actor, writer and singer-songwriter known for her work on stage and screen, as well as a former finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama for her play Bulrusher. In addition to writing and starring in Angela’s Mixtape, she’s lent her pen to television series such as Netflix’s She’s Gotta Have It and FX’s Justified: City Primeval, and she has appeared in numerous theater productions and films.

Demi Lovato has a complicated relationship with her adolescent years, which the former Disney Channel idol explores in the upcoming documentary Child Star. And in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, they went even more in-depth about feelings of sadness and regret that have lingered from that time, especially concerning people who may have been hurt in stride.
“I didn’t realize that child stardom could be traumatic — and it isn’t traumatic for everyone, but for me, it was,” Lovato told the publication in a profile published Wednesday (Aug. 14), expressing regret for treating some of the people in her orbit poorly while working on past Disney projects.

Trending on Billboard

“I think about people in the wardrobe department on [Sonny With a Chance] because I’d go in there in bad moods all the time, and I worry about guest stars that came on or the other actors or the people during Camp Rock 2,” they continued. “And it’s easy to excuse that behavior because I was so young and in so much pain, but I’m really remorseful, and that’s a guilt that stays with you forever.”

Lovato also recalled the tensions that arose from being the primary money-maker in her family as a teenager. “Having the child be the breadwinner almost inherently changes the dynamic of a family, and then it becomes, like, how do you discipline that breadwinner?” the singer said of their mom and stepdad. “I mean, they’d try to ground me, but I was an egotistical child star, and I thought I was on top of the world. I’d be like, ‘But I pay the bills,’ and what do you say to that?”

Also featuring interviews with Drew Barrymore, Kenan Thompson, Raven-Symoné, Alyson Stoner and JoJo Siwa, Child Star arrives Sept. 17 on Hulu and marks Lovato’s directorial debut. In the THR interview, she describes wanting the project to serve as a cautionary tale for parents of other kids gunning for a career in the “pressure cooker” of Hollywood.

Now 32, the “Cool for the Summer” artist is happily in love with fiancé Jutes and is considering having children, possibly soon. As for whether those kids will be allowed to pursue careers like she did, Lovato says there’s a hard bottom line.

“I’d say, ‘Let’s study music theory and prepare you for the day you turn 18, because it’s not happening before that,’” they told the publication. “Not because I don’t believe in you or love you or want you to be happy, but because I want you to have a childhood, the childhood that I didn’t have.’”