Emma Watson Drops A Beat For Gender Equality

Emma Watson beatboxing while Lin-Manuel Miranda freestyles about feminism will make your day

Emma Watson may be an experienced and talented performer, but let's just say beatboxing is probably not a skill she’d list on her CV.

That said, this video of Emma beatboxing while Lin-Manuel Miranda (an American composer, lyricist, rapper, and actor known for starring in Broadway musicals) freestyles about gender equality will give you all the Friday feels. The clip also confirms Emma is willing to go way outside her comfort zone in the name of feminist activism.

This is the deal: expert word-wrangler, Lin, had agreed to freestyle on the subject of feminism if Emma would provide the beat. Lin refused to give Emma any instruction (in the nicest way possible) - he felt confident in her abilities, positive Emma has seen a lot of beatboxing before and could pull it out of the bag…

In the video Emma is seen disagreeing: ‘This is going to be bad…’

Though she does make a promising start – she knows to use her hand as a ‘spit guard’ to shield Lin’s face from collateral spray. Pro points for this.

And what follows is pretty delightful. Emma drops a beat and Miranda raps about feminism, spitting the lyrics:

‘How can we not be equal? We’re like half. Women are like half of the people on earth, and yes they should have been equal since birth. That means all day, every day, equal pay, every way…’

The combined effort of sustaining the beat, and Emma’s self-consciousness at her delivery of the rhythmic-mouth-sounds has the affect of turning her bright red.

Emma is basically all of us trying to beatbox.

When their rap breaks Emma says: ‘I’m so embarrassed right now, I’m literally the colour of a tomato... No one ever ask me to do that again. These are the lengths that I will go to for gender equality’

The two talents created the clip to promote Watson’s He for She