Lin-Manuel Miranda is busy filming the movie version of the Broadway smash, In the Heights, on location in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City.

As he tweeted in July, while shooting he’s seeing “our neighbors, old and young … thanking us, [saying] ‘You’re putting us Latinos on the map in a big way, papa, keep going.’ So. We’ll keep going.”

He recently told Departures in its September cover story that the reaction is driving him to bring the story to more people beyond just Broadway fans.

Given America’s recent issues with immigration and ICE, Lin says things in the film needed to change.

“There are things that were implicit then that are explicit now, like the way this wave of Latinx immigrants has to fight for their personhood,” he said in the interview. “In this world we are more demonized than we have ever been.”

He continued, “This notion of, ‘We came from somewhere else and we’re trying to make the best of our lives here. We are just like you’ — this, somehow, is a radical statement in 2019. It shouldn’t be. It didn’t feel that radical in 2008 [when In the Heights opened on Broadway], but it actually is, because there are so many who would say, ‘You don’t belong here. This country’s full.’ To see these characters joyously waving the flags of their home countries in New York City, it’s crazy that that’s a radical act. But it’s wonderful to put that on screen.”

“When people say … whatever it is they want you to stick to because it agrees with their thing—I would love to!,” he added. “I would love nothing more than to curl up in a ball and just write things, but our work exists in the world and our work exists in conversation with the world. So, we have to talk about the world as we see it.”