"We're very excited about the second season [of Smash]. I guess my only worry is not having a strong lead-in, as it did in the first season...The show, for us was an unqualified success in its first season, and all I want to do is continue that into its second season. In some big ways, it's a different show, but it's also very much the same show," NBC Entertainment Chairman Bob Greenblatt addressed the critics, LA TV Insider Examiner included, during the peacock network's TCA tour today in Los Angeles.
But what did the show's new executive producer Josh Safran and cast have to say? They were all on-hand for a special Q&A with the press, as well. Here is our live blog of the session:
- NBC announces the release of the "Bombshell" soundtrack to be February 12th 2013. Songs from both seasons include "Let Me Be Your Star," "At Your Feet," "Smash!", "Never Give All The Heart," "The 20th Century Mambo," "The National Pasttime," "History is Made at Night," "I Never Met a Wolf Who Didn't Love To Howl," "Mr & Mrs Smith," "Don't Say Yes Until I Finish Talking," "On Lexington & 52nd St," "Cut, Print...Moving On," "Public Relations," "Dig Deep," "Second Hand White Baby Grand," "They Just Keep Moving The Line," "Let's Be Bad," "The Right Regrets," "(Let's Start) Tomorrow Tonight," "Our Little Secret," "Hang The Moon," and "Don't Forget Me."
- So much meta in this S2 Smash trailer, including Bernadette Peters telling Ivy "you may be a star in the making but you're not there yet."
- Debra Messing is ill and could not fly to LA to be here. She is not here via satellite, either.
- "Here, coming in and seeing what was so great already, changes-wise, I think it is Smash. The stuff that you love from last year is still there, and the stuff that people thought maybe went off on tangents, we've looked at. Maybe bigger, more music, maybe younger, in regards to the new castmembers." - Safran was a fan of season one and excited to tweak it. Feels it's harder to outright create.
- "There was never anything that I outright didn't like," Safran. "I just thought [season one] was interesting to watch. It was somebody else's world...It was fun to be an audience member and then come in and put my ideas in."
- Safran says the reviews in Smash for "Bombshell" are not intended to be meta jabs at the reviews critics of the show itself made.
- Jeremy Jordan and Andy Mientus' characters have a group of composers around them. They are working on more than just their new, original pop musical.
- Jordan and Mientus' characters have an "off-off Broadway, edgy" show called "Hit List." Mientus does not play a performer, but Smash found "multiple ways" to showcase Mientus' real life singing talent.
- Jennifer Hudson is in three of the first four episodes of season two. Safran was "very grateful to have her." The idea of her character is to show Karen and Ivy the kind of "star" they should want to be. She came to the show on Bob Greenblatt's suggestion.
- Other Smash guest stars are Liza Minelli, Sean Hayes, return of Bernadette Peters.
- "Ellis is still alive!" Smash has a little piece of him in episode four this year. The producers are kind of threatening he could pop back up: "How could you forget Ellis?" (Um, we can't forget him, that's the problem, but we really want to!)
- Megan Hilty says "We're not doing a reality show. There are some things that could be more realistic, but why?" Her friends from real Broadway sometimes ask her why the show doesn't do certain things certain ways.
- Christian Borle promises really "dead-on," though at times "bizarre" Broadway behind-the-scenes rituals coming to season two. More "insider" stuff.
- "I'm gay, and there are gay characters on the show, so it's representative of that world," Safran says when a journalist tells him Smash was "the gayest show on television last season"-- in reference to the amount of gay characters in the show.
- "We always say on a scale of 1 to 10, we rate her as a 5," Hilty on Hudson. "She's okay," Katharine McPhee adds, jokingly.
- But seriously, not enough praise for Hudson-- her talent, her niceness, her professionalism on set. "She's a force," says Hilty.
- Smash producers still want "Bombshell" to someday really go to Broadway.
- Jordan says he watched every episode of Smash but was not caught up when he got the call to be on it. "I think most people in the Broadway community watch Smash religiously because if any group is going to connect with it, it's going to be us."
- Jordan admits that as a kid he wanted to be "a computer scientist adventure guy, changing the world, but that didn't work out, so Plan B was musical theater." Not something you hear EVER.
- "I think it's a lot funner and easier to play a producer than to be a producer," Anjelica Huston. "She's an opportunity to play a strong woman who has, if you'll forgive the word, balls. She's a go-getter; she's in a male-oriented society; she has to go to her quite unpleasant ex husband to help facilitate getting "Bombshell" on the road this season.
- Huston calls Eileen's boyfriend "nefarious."
- "A really good way to explain it is sort of an out-of-body experience. It really does feel like I was a different person. It's been several years...I'm aware of what's going on with who the next judge is and grateful that it's done what it was supposed to do, which was get you that platform and get you to the next thing, but it's not something where I feel like [it's my] life identity," McPhee on Idol.
- "It's because I voted for you for like a million times!" Hilty says when McPhee said it was "crazy" that she got to the finals on Idol.
- "I really did not know myself when I was on that show-- I mean in terms of a musician. It's one thing if you can sing; that's great, but you really should know yourself as a musician...Coming off the show, I kind of wanted to be an actress. I went on American Idol to get more exposure, but with it came a record company, and I didn't realize [what that meant]. I wasn't ready for that," McPhee, still re: Idol.
- Smash's other producers feel Safran came in and addressed all of the issues that we critics were picking apart, that they were reading about and not always disagreeing with.
- "It's keeping consistent in season two."
- Steven Spielberg in early talks for Smash said "What if each year we add another musical?" Safran took that kernel for season two. They're keeping "Bombshell" on-going but he found a way to start "Hit List," so radically different & on a parallel track. Season three might see three shows within the shows (if they get a season three).
- "Hit List" clip playing is a performance by Jordan and McPhee on a kind of RENT stage-- brick wall, metal risers, dancers around them. "I Heard Your Voice in a Dream."
- "I love our relationship because it is on a constant roller coaster," Hilty on Karen/Ivy's relationship. "We have all these beautiful moments, and then someone goes and ruins it, like sleeping with someone's fiance or something. It will always be that way."
- McPhee says Karen and Ivy live in their own worlds in season two for a little while. "It will be interesting" when they cross paths again, she promises.
- McPhee says this season they do more live lip-synching during production, but they shoot 6-8 months a year and physically too taxing to try to do that on every number. Hilty adds a lot of the equipment ruins the sound of live singing during shooting anyway. Hence ADR. "When I do the numbers, I sing full-out," Jordan says. "I think you can still pull the same sort of emotional, at least I hope to, as you would in a live performance."
- The first Tweet that comes to mind when thinking of negative reviews for Smash? Dealt with scarves, of course!
- On showrunner switch: "It really wasn't a question of us wanting to change a showrunner...Theresa is a really great artist, and her focus was taken up by a lot of her other loves, which included the theater, so it was availability and where her passions really lay."
- Jordan says he was a waiter for about a year and a half and then the ball started rolling, he gained confidence in himself, and chance met up with him. He got his first role as a Swing in Rock of Ages, which he called a "dream come true. So the fact that I'm here now is just ridiculous!"
- Season two will have more of the "nitty gritty" of trying to stage musicals because now there are two. Safran loves "pulling back the curtain" on that process.
- "Thank God!" Jack Davenport says about "Bombshell" going back into rehearsals and directing a lot. Only thing he got to say all panel.
- Session ends with another sneak peek: Borle and McPhee's "Public Relations" from episode four, which Greenblatt calls quintessential "Bombshell" and the antithesis of "Hit List."
Smash returns to NBC on February 5th 2013 with a special two-hour premiere event. Click here for our take on the return.
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