Smash’s marketing team took to advertising “introducing” its two female leads, Katharine McPhee and Megan Hilty, but in a way that just seems unfair to the talented duo who have been in their respective positions for years. Hilty, especially, comes to Smash with a list of television guest spots from The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, to Bones, CSI, and a particularly memorable recent turn as a heckler on Louie, not to mention her actual work on Broadway in both Wicked and 9 to 5. She is every bit the industry veteran that her own Smash role of Ivy Lynn resembles herself. In fact, that, in large part, is what made Theresa Rebeck and NBC sit up and take notice of Hilty for their new musical drama.
“I was looking at Ivy just because that’s what they were asking me to look at,” Hilty opened up to LA TV Insider Examiner about the casting process for Smash.
“I loved the script, and I loved the character, but there was one huge obstacle, I guess, for me. In the character breakdown, it said that she’s a dancer, and specifically that she’d been in the ensemble for about ten years. And I know what that is, and that’s not me. I do not have those extraordinary talents that you’re required to have to be in a Broadway ensemble: I’m not a dancer.”
Hilty may be underestimating herself, though, because for anyone who has already seen the pilot, let alone the subsequent episodes, she takes to the performances in their entirety, and that includes staging a somewhat elaborate baseball number for the show within the show. That credit, she claims, goes to Smash’s “incredible choreographer” Josh Bergasse. Hilty swears he will be the biggest star of anybody in the show for how he tailors each number to the actors’ individual dance abilities.
“It is a muscle, like anything else, as far as learning the steps and the sequences go, and I do feel that he has strengthened that muscle for me. It’s confidence, let me tell you; it requires huge confidence to do something like that, and that’s one thing because of Josh, too; he really caters to the things that you’re good at,” Hilty said.
Hilty may humbly deflect praise for her dancing, but her character of Ivy definitely would not. Ivy is the type of woman who has made a name for herself in this industry at all costs, and she’s grasping tightly to it with both hands. When the role of Marilyn Monroe in a new musical presents itself, it is more than just a dream role for Ivy: it is the role she sees as her last chance at breaking out from the ensemble and being a leading lady.
“There’s no such thing as job security,” Hilty said of theater life both in Smash and in her real life. “There’s always that pressure, especially early on in the developmental stages of a musical on Broadway. Even if you get the job, it doesn’t mean you’re going to keep it very long. You’re always replaceable; there’s always fifteen girls who can sing better or dance better, act better, are prettier, whatever. So you always have to be on your game. And for someone like Ivy, the stakes are really high. This is it for her. This is her big chance. Having an obstacle like Karen thrown in her way and constantly shoved in her face is very difficult for her. It might lead to some bad behavior.”
Bad behavior like sleeping with the director (Jack Davenport) to give her the edge and calling Karen (McPhee) out when she notices little mistakes during workshop rehearsals. Everyone, once in awhile, lets someone or something get to them, Hilty pointed out, and Ivy is no exception. But Hilty hopes the humanity to Ivy’s desire is what redeems her and makes her relatable in the audience’s eyes.
“She’s just as anxious, if not more [that Karen], because there’s so much on the line, and that makes her human. If she wasn’t nervous, then there’d be a problem. She clearly doesn’t believe that this role is hers. She wants it but is extremely anxious that she won’t get it,” Hilty revealed.
“I think Ivy was aware there’s competition; I think the real problem for her with Karen is that she came out of nowhere and has done nothing, and now, suddenly someone who hasn’t worked her way up through the ranks the way [Ivy] has may possibly get something handed to her on a silver platter drives her crazy. Like in any job! I’m sure if you saw someone going after any job that you were going after, and you thought they didn’t have any credits or hadn’t trained…[Ivy] is deeply flawed and deeply insecure just like any of us, and you will see a lot of moments where she’s really going through that while she’s tough on the exterior.”
Many of Ivy’s own insecurities may come from her family life. In the pilot we hear her mother basically cut her daughter’s good news over her callbacks short, favoring instead to talk about a small achievement of her brother. Hilty promised more tension when her mother makes an actual appearance (in the form of Bernadette Peters), which will be a nice contrast to the almost ass-kissing attention many behind-the-scenes in the theater world are paying her as they woo her for this new project.
“I will say that very soon, like maybe the fifth or sixth episode, you’ll really start to see Ivy’s family life, and it will start to explain Ivy’s behavior; it will explain a lot about who she is and how she handles some situations,” Hilty teased.
All of the insight into Ivy garnered through sitting alone with her in moments like the one just before her audition or in her apartment on the phone with her mother, Hilty hopes, will only further endear her to the audience and help them sympathize, rather than judge, when she does pull a diva moment or act advantageously with Derek.
So why join Team Ivy, according to Hilty?
“I believe in paying your dues and in working your way up in life so you can appreciate what it’s like to be on the bottom, you know? And I would say that Ivy knows what that’s like, and she’s catered to it, and her time has come!”
Well, we certainly think you could say the same about Hilty herself, and personally, we’re glad her time as come on such a quality project.
Smash airs on NBC on Monday nights at 10pm.
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