All eyes will be on Smash to see if Season 2 hits the right notes.
The main conclusion about the first season of Smash was that... it wasn’t a smash. Instead it was a strange mix of love it/hate it characters and storylines. Thankfully, NBC (like many of us) still believed that despite the first season missteps there is still a good show here. The curtain opens on a second season tonight.
With a new showrunner in Joshua Safran (Gossip Girl) steering the ship, we’ll see familiar faces like Ivy (Megan Hilty), Tom & Sam (Christian Borle and Leslie Odom, Jr.) and Julia (Debra Messing, minus the annoying first season scarves) as well as new faces in Broadway’s Andy Mientus (who we recently spoke with), Jeremy Jordan (Newsies) and Krysta Rodriguez (The Addams Family).
And while we do see Julia’s husband (Brian d’Arcy James) in the opening episode, he won’t be around for long and will follow Dev (Raza Jaffrey) and Ellis (Jaime Cepero) off the stage.
So, how did Safran approach shaping Smash into (hopefully) a huge hit? We chatted with him last week to find out.
AE: In the first episode back, Bombshell’s bad reviews are talked about and it made me wonder if that was a reflection on the first season of Smash, which became something of a whipping dog in the press last year. Is there a correlation there?
JS: I know it would be fun to say yes there is, but actually there isn’t and this is why. One of the things that I talked essentially with Marc and Scott and Neil and Craig about when I went to the show is, what happens for a show between its out-of-town tryout and coming to Broadway?
What always happens is you very much take a beating in the press. If your reviews are not good you may not even come to Broadway or if they’re good, but there are issues that people had, you look at those issues and try to figure out if you have enough time to fix them. So, it was really more born out of the natural process that actually happens.
Katharine McPhee's Karen will be romancing new cast member Jeremy Jordan this season.
AE: Are there rules for when you put a musical number in the show? Does it always need to serve the story or can it just be a fun number you guys came up with?
JS: I believe it should, whenever possible, match the story. So, whether it’s as simple as in the premiere of ‘Cut, Print, Moving On’ opens the episode and we as an audience and Smash itself and Bombshell the musical are all sort of at that ‘moving on’ stage. So, that was very ingenious of Marc and Scott to be able to see that and put that in.
Then Broadway Here I Come, obviously, is a literal fashion at the end of the first hour announcing that these new talents…so that matched as well with moving forward into the second hour of the premier, you have Derek’s feverish fantasy about what he feels about the women in his life. Everything I really feel, the goal is to find a way that it bodes for…it’s a Bombshell number that fits into the context of Bombshell, but also fits into the context of the lives of the characters.
AE: How challenging was it to incorporate the new cast members into the world?
JS: It was actually not a challenge, a new rival musical was very much a part of my pitch for season two because the sound is so different and the world is so different from Bombshell it actually fit in quite nicely. It doesn’t feel like you’re pulling from one thing…they are actually two separate tracks.
For me it was also important, coming into the show at the second season, to have some characters that came from me. I’m very, very grateful my characters that Theresa [Rebeck] created, I think they’ve got great back stories, great dynamics and you understand them and you know them and love being able to play with them, but I also feel like it was also important for me to add some of my own voices to the mix to help compliment them.
AE: Let’s start talking about the characters with Ivy, who starts out very down and out for good reason. She went through a lot last season. Do we see her spunk come back?
JS: Yes, I definitely think that Ivy’s spunk is very present this year. It’s maybe not necessarily directed in a Machiavellian fashion…although I don’t think Ivy was ever actually Machiavellian. I think she just acted more out of insecurity and fear and maybe didn’t’ think through actions. This year she’s trying very hard to take that breath and that pause before committing…[and] there are some twists and turns thrown her way, but you’ll very much see the season one Ivy.
AE: I’m guessing when Bernadette Peters comes back that’ll stir her up a bit.
JS: That is who I was referring to…definitely a thorn in her side.
Expect more real-life cameos like Harvey Fierstein (with Borle) this season.
AE: What’s the biggest challenge for Karen (Katharine McPhee) in these new episodes?
JS: When we begin her biggest challenge is that this roadblock that Bombshell has hit. She finally has gotten very, very close to the life of her dreams and the rug is ripped out from under her.So, when you get that close, that means that maybe that might never happen again or maybe you actually have to create your own destiny and find a way to control it yourself and make it happen for you.
I think Karen definitely, in season one, was the outsider learning the ropes, finding her way in, sort of feeling around and seeing what worked and what didn’t work. In season two, she very much now knows the lay of the land and is going after something that she wants for herself, very specifically.
AE: One of my favorite parts of the first season was the Tom and Sam romance but Sam’s to be going on the road. Does that get in the way of their relationship?
JS: Well yes it does, as you see in the premiere. Sam is a regular on the show we will see more of him. For me it was sort of like a chance to show that Tom has this self-sabotage aspect of himself, whenever anything gets too close he sort of pushes it away a little bit and Sam is the first person to get past that in season one. Now it is sort of rearing its head again and that’s something that Tom’s going to have to deal with.
One of the things also for me that I love about the show is, all of the gay characters that we have, that we can show different aspects of their lives and how they navigate this world where they’re accepted, which is also great for me. The musical theater world is a very accepting world.
Ivy (Megan Hilty) gets some hang time with her gay BFF, Sam (Leslie Odom, Jr)
AE: Have you seen the changes in terms of gay characters and storylines even since you started with Gossip Girl? Is there a difference you see now?
JS: I definitely do. I feel like character sexuality at least for us in the writer room is it’s natural, which is great. I never thought that was going to happen. When I came out I was in college, even though I’m not that old, just the fact that it has changed so much since that happened for me, shows also how it’s changed for the world.
It’s kind of great for me to have a character like Kyle played by Andy Mientus. It’s not a story of how did he come out or is he going to come out, he’s very clearly out and no one has issue with it. It never comes up. It’s not a reason for him to identify himself. That’s refreshing.
I definitely think the relationship between Kyle and Jimmy is tricky. In episode four you learn a little bit that Kyle has feelings for his best friend. I know that that’s a tricky story some people might say. ‘Oh, here’s a gay character that’s falling in love with his straight friend. But to me that’s a very clear thing that happens in the world, it doesn’t matter whether you’re straight and you are in love with your best friend. I very much wanted to show what it’s like to work with somebody that you can’t have. You connect on such a creative level together, but you can’t create a romantic level. So, I hope that the audience…for me it’s very important, I hope our gay audience and our straight audience really embraces that story.
Jennifer Hudson as a Broadway star AND Sheryl Lee Ralph as her mother? Sign. Us. Up.
AE: Jennifer Hudson is such a ball of fire and you incorporated her so well into the world. Will we get more of her later in the season?
JS: No, we will not and that’s not because we don’t want her. All of us here love working with Jennifer and want to work with her again in every episode we could, it’s just a matter of scheduling so we knew we had her for this short window. Knowing you will have a beginning, a middle, and an end for a character it’s always very helpful as opposed to sort of open ended.So, we were able to create a full storyline and integrate it around the story. I’m glad that you agree.
So, it was very important for me to not make Jennifer’s character the diva that comes between Karen and Ivy or they’re battling for the same role or any of that.
AE: You always did such a great job with cameos of real people in the world of Gossip Girl; will we be seeing more of that on Smash?
JS: Absolutely. As much as possible. Jon Robbie Baitz plays himself in episode five; there are a couple of other people that I can’t tell you yet because it hasn’t happened yet. Our fingers are crossed.Throughout the season there are definite cameos from real people around the theatrical world. It’s always fun to do that.
Smash premieres tonight with a 2-hour premiere starting at 9pm on NBC.
