Jimmy Smits Auditioned for 'In the Heights' with a Singing Clip from 'NYPD Blue'

Jimmy Smits is opening up about his audition process for In the Heights!

In an interview with USA Today, the 65-year-old actor said that he knew he was going to have to prove his singing chops in order to score a role in the musical.

He combed through his impressive resume in order to find some clips of himself singing and submitted videos from some unexpected shows to demonstrate his musical abilities!

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“We were scrambling putting together little video clips of me singing “Duke of Earl” with Dennis Franz in the squad car or a little song flourish in West Wing,” Jimmy said. “It wasn’t heavy lifting on the musical thing. But I still had to kind of convince them that I could do it.”

Jimmy had about six lines of singing during the musical and he put in the work to make sure his performance, however brief, lived up to the rest of the cast’s talents.

“Even for six lines of musical interlude dialogue, there were four vocal coaches on two different coasts,” he shared. “If you haven’t done something since summer stock theater or high school productions, you want to be on point. Especially when you got all those powerhouse voices happening.”

One of the stars from the movie recently spoke out about the controversy surrounding the film…