Stephanie Beatriz recorded Encanto‘s “Waiting On A Miracle” while she was in labor
The former Brooklyn Nine-Nine truly was waiting on a miracle while singing the song
Aux News Encanto
When Stephanie Beatriz sang “Waiting On A Miracle” for Encanto, her life imitated art, presumably more than the actor—who was pregnant at the time—expected when she signed on for the film. In an interview with Variety, the former Brooklyn Nine-Nine star shared that she was actually in labor while recording the vocals. You know, a totally chill and normal experience.
Instead of letting the crew know that the arrival of her own “miracle” was imminent, she kept it a secret.
“I didn’t want to tell anybody at Disney because I didn’t want anyone to freak out, but I was already having some contractions when we were scheduled to record that day,” she recalls in the interview. “I was like ‘Well, fingers crossed I finish the song before [the baby] comes!’” Her daughter Rosaline was born the next day.
The Disney movie’s director Byron Howard confirms that nobody on set was privy to what was going on. “We knew she was very, very, very, very ready to have that baby. But she did not tell us she was almost, almost ready,” he says.
Beatriz also talks about how much the role of Mirabel, the heroine who initially was the black sheep of the family due to her being the only one without magical powers, means to her. “Most of [my roles] I disappear into the character, and in a weird way it’s the same with this because it’s the most ‘like me’ role I’ve ever played, yet I’ve disappeared. It’s not my face, it’s an animated person,” she says.
Encanto is Disney’s first Latinx-focused animated film and it received the Academy Award nominations: Best Animated Feature, Best Original Score, and Best Original Song.
However, “Waiting On A Miracle” and “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” (the song that dethroned Frozen’s “Let It Go” as the one driving parents crazy these days) weren’t nominated for Best Original Song, it was “Dos Oruguitas” that received the honor.
Encanto is currently available to stream on Disney Plus.
32 Comments
She’s a damn treasure.
Came here to say the same thing.
She’s a damn treasure Yes, she is. I thought I first encountered her in Brooklyn 99, but nah – that voice she uses as Rosa threw me. I’d already seen her in Modern Family and a few other things.The article doesn’t say, but I wouldn’t be surprised if three hours after the birth she was working on another, already contracted gig….
Brooklyn Nine Nine was my first exposure to her and I was absolutely shocked when it turned out she’s super bubbly.I adore her.
Encanto is Disney’s first Latinx-focused animated film…Does Pixar’s Coco not count?
Probably meant Disney Animation itself, not subsidiary like Pixar. Otherwise you’d be 100% correct.
Does The Three Cabelleros not count? It’s from 1944 and focused on Donald Duck, so I assume with a modern eye parts of it are regrettable. But it was produced as a goodwill overture to get Disney more popular in Latin America and included Latin American stars and characters.
And Saludos Amigos came first.
I wasn’t counting Saludos Amigos because it’s too short to count as a feature.
Disney counts it – Tangled was officially the 50th
Having re-watched that film within the past year, probably the only thing “modern eyes” might find slightly objectional is the scene where the three animated characters are flying around the beach and Donald is… well, to put it bluntly, really horny over sunbathing women. Other than that, though, I can’t imagine there’s anything that would cause offense. It’s a fairy-tale look at Mexico and Brazil, to be sure, but done in much of the same manner as Disney’s European-based fairy tales. And some of the music, sung in the native languages without subtitles, really has some awesome rhythms.
It does, but everything has to be “first” at something. That way it can also be “biggest.”
I guess you could count Sofia the First and Elena of Eleanor as well, but a lot of people missed those because they were aimed at preschoolers (I only know them through osmosis from working at a toy store).
Dos Oruguitas sounds catchy, pretty, and painfully derivative. Cribs heavily from songs like Hey There Delilah, that omnipresent ukelele cover of Over the Rainbow, and it basically mugs Under the Sea from Little Mermaid in an alley and takes its wallet. God forbid it wins an Oscar.
All those years as Rosa rubbed off on her.
Note to self: people like stories about union employees working while in labor. – Bob Chapek
I would like for Stephanie Beatriz and Melissa Fumero both to become megastars, please and thank you.
Beatriz, at a minimum, is almost certain to wind up in the MCU.
That… doesn’t sound healthy? Does that not sound healthy to someone else? I don’t even mean physically perse, I admit I don’t know that much about that maybe she was fine, but from a labour-relation POV alone?
From a workplace point of view, she should have probably called out. But she’s also an artist creating art with other artists, so it’s understandable. She clearly cared a lot about the movie and the character.
There are several ways of looking at it, but my takeaway is that the economy has absorbed feminism so thoroughly that people rejoice when a union contractor for a multibillion-dollar corporation reports to work while in labor. On one hand it would be messed up to say that women in labor are so fragile that they need to be in bed with their feet up. Ditto saying that a woman in labor can’t decide where she spends her time. On the other hand, labor and childbirth are more important in the grand scheme of things than movies. We’ve simply recalibrated our expectations of living to accept that a person prioritizing a less important monetary transaction over a more important life event is a sign of individual gumption.
So at first my reaction was negative at her working, but ‘in labor’ probably wasn’t active contractions every few minutes. I worked the day before having my twins. I was having contractions every once in awhile. So technically I worked while in labor, but it wasn’t an actual issue.
I’ve only been around one birth, but yeah… my wife was “in labor” for hours and hours without anything actually happening, and before any contractions even really started. And then once the actually delivery started (obviously, contractions had been going on for a bit at this point), our son popped out within 15 minutes.
Women know their bodies. When someone “goes in to labor” it’s not like in the movies where there’s screaming and pain immediately. There’s time to get prepped and get in the car and go.(Unless their water breaks, in which case there’s more urgency but still no real panic.)Contractions also can occur *prior* to going in to labor (Braxton Hicks contractions) which can often be mistaken for labor. Which is why women are instructed to wait until they come X minutes apart before coming in.
It really depends on how far advanced into labor she was. I suspect not very far.
I’ve never heard of singing putting a labor in jeopardy. You can start contracting days before shit starts getting really real. Or you could start contracting at noon and the baby pops out at 1p. You’d know which one you were in, though.
Good point. Beatriz didn’t say anything in the story about it being a difficult pregnancy. I think it’s safe to assume everything was going according to plan if she was eager to go to the studio and get the song recorded. It also sounds like she was in the early stages and felt she had time before it got serious. As it happens, she was right.It was also her choice if she wanted to go into the office that day. Few employers would demand a woman in her third trimester show up for work if she wasn’t feeling up to it. Any that would can expect a lawsuit instead of a cute story in Variety.I do know this was her first child. I’m certainly no expert, but every pregnant woman I’ve ever known spent longer in labor with the first one than later ones. Beatriz is a grown woman and I’m betting she knows much more than any of us do about how own her body works.
There’s nothing in the story that indicates she was there against her will. She didn’t say anything about a perceived threat of reprisal for calling in sick. She definitely wasn’t saying anything against the studio, the director, the producers or anyone else for her being in the studio that day. She did very clearly say she kept the fact that she was feeling labor pains to herself, by choice.
Reading a lot of concern trolls and I’m not sure how many of them actually know how pregnancy and labor work.Beatriz said she was “having some contractions” but if she was capable of singing and performing she felt she was comfortable enough to continue working.Additionally, I don’t think some people realize labor isn’t like in the movies where there’s screaming and pain and crying *immediately* when it begins.If she was like most women, she was feeling a few contractions and suspected the baby may be coming, but also like most women she was paying attention to her doctor’s instructions about when they were close enough together to come in.My wife had to basically walk me through this whole thing herself when she was pregnant with our first.
I’m greatly enjoying being one of probably about four people on the planet who really encountered her first in Encanto and then only now have been finally starting to watch through Brooklyn 99. Everyone else is saying “holy crap I can’t believe that Rosa Diaz is all bubbly and singing,” while I’m saying “holy crap I can’t believe that Maribel Madrigal is such a fucking stone-cold don’t-fuck-with-me commanding presence.” It’s fun.
I hope “Dos Oroguitas” loses just to show Disney what a supreme screw-up nominating it was. It’s maybe the fourth-best song in the film.
Paraphrasing Lin-Manuel Miranda, Immigrants, they get the job done.