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[0:00] Aaron Albano: You're listening to Smash'ed from The Ensemblist, the only podcast that shows you Broadway from the inside out. I'm Aaron Albano and I'm Mo Brady.

[0:25] Mo Brady: Welcome back listeners to our tongue-in-cheek recap of what is television's most detailed depiction of the theater industry. And yes, we're still talking about the NBC series that aired from 2012 to 2013.

[0:37] Aaron Albano: Smash was also an incredible glimpse at the theater community in the early 2010s, as many of the show's writers, actors, and dancers were played by real Broadway performers with real Broadway cred.

[0:47] Mo Brady: But we wanted to go back in time to see how the show has weathered. The show famously didn't land with a wide audience, but can rewatching the series help us understand why? So let's dive in and talk about Season 1, Episode 10, Understudy. Aaron, give us the stats.

[1:02] Aaron Albano: Happy to, Mo. Understudy premiered on April 9, 2012. It was written by Jerome Hairston and directed by Adam Dernstein. The viewership dipped yet again from the previous week, premiering to an audience of 5.99 million viewers.

[1:20] Mo Brady: Songs this week featured one cover of Kelly Clarkson's "Breakaway" and two original songs by Marc Shaiman and Scott Whitman: a sort of reprise of Marilyn's very first song in the series, but this time Katherine McPhee singing "Never Give All the Heart," and a new song featuring stand-in Christian Borle called "Don't Say Yes Until I Finish Talking."

[1:39] Aaron Albano: And hit us with that synopsis, Mo.

[1:41] Mo Brady: Bam. Like a bombshell. All right. The episode opens with a room of cast, creatives, and investors waiting to start a reading of the Bombshell script. Waiting, that is, on Hollywood star Rebecca Duvall, who misses playing Marilyn in the reading because she's stuck in Cuba. In Rebecca's absence, Tom, Julia, and Derek come to Karen, telling her that they want her to understudy Marilyn. Many of her ensemble-ist cohorts giggle with Karen excitedly, but Bobby and Sam note that she's never going to hack it, especially after Ivy breaks her kneecaps.

[2:16] Aaron Albano: Now Ivy is furious that Karen has been given the job, even though Derek tells her that her outburst at Heaven on Earth means that he can't even hire her for the chorus. Derek verbally assaults Karen in rehearsal, which causes Bobby and Jessica to place bets on whether Karen will cry. But later at her apartment, Ivy shows a moment of kindness and advises Derek that the only directors that were ever successful with Marilyn were the ones who babied her. She continues her rebranding campaign, joining Karen and the ensemble-ists of Bombshell for appletinis after rehearsal, and bringing her once-rival a pair of Monroe-inspired sunglasses.

[2:57] Mo Brady: Back at rehearsal, Derek calls the cast to run the Zanuck number, about Daryl R. Zanuck, producer of All About Eve. When Derek asks, "Where is Zanuck?," Tom replies, "You don't want to know, but I'm standing in today." The steam room-inspired number is performed full out by Manuel Herrera, Curtis Holbrook, Keith Kuhl, Spencer Liff, Leslie Odom Jr., J. Manuel Santos, Philip Spaeth, and Wesley Taylor.

[3:21] Aaron Albano: One run through, though, seems to be good enough, as Derek gives no notes and quickly moves on to Karen to guide her with kindness. When Rebecca Duvall's return from Cuba becomes imminent, Derek shows up at Karen's apartment to thank her for her good work. Not only that, he apologizes to Karen for his behavior back in the pilot episode. When Karen's boyfriend Dev sees Derek walking out of their building, the two men get into a sidewalk fistfight.

[3:47] Mo Brady: Dev floats the idea that she quit the show in order to avoid Derek, but she argues back, telling Dev, "Marilyn is everything I came to this city to do, everything I want to be." She goes to rehearsal the next day, covering the role of Marilyn, until Rebecca Duvall shows up, played by real-life star Uma Thurman. In other news, Frank is still M.I.A. after learning that Julia cheated on him with Michael Swift. Tom's lawyer boyfriend, whose name we can't remember, confronts him about Tom's infatuation with Sam. And Eileen's bartender Nick connects her with a rock star named Randy Cobra, who takes over the investing from three Broadway veterans.

[4:39] Aaron Albano: Okay. So you asked me at this point, how you felt like the show was doing?

[4:47] Mo Brady: Yeah. Yeah. What did you mean? Okay. So 10 episodes ago, we wanted to do this to see if eight years later, this show was an accurate representation of our business. We're two-thirds of the way through. How do you think it's doing?

[5:03] Aaron Albano: At being an accurate representation of our business?

[5:05] Mo Brady: Maybe not even necessarily like a literal accurate representation, but energy, gist. At this point in the show, 10 episodes in, what do you feel like? Do you feel like enough rings true or is it just a fantasy show about our business? Like if we found a newbie to Smash and they wanted to know what we thought of the show, what would we say having watched 10 out of the 15 episodes of the first season?

[5:31] Aaron Albano: I think that it is not a realistic depiction, that it is a melodrama, but it's not a melodrama enough.

[5:39] Mo Brady: But is that the show that we wanted when we first started watching?

[5:41] Aaron Albano: No, I think I was much more pretentious about like, I want a show that represents my community.

[5:46] Mo Brady: But is that the show that America wanted to watch?

[5:49] Aaron Albano: I mean, cause that's what's so interesting about watching it now is that fast forwarding to now that we just saw like Fosse/Verdon, just using Fosse/Verdon as an example again. We both weren't there like we were for this show, but it feels as though that was closer of a depiction of realism in our business. Energetically, that show feels more true to life than this show does.

[6:15] Mo Brady: Is the business able to be romanticized in the way we can romanticize the seventies? You think about the seventies on Broadway and it was all just like sexy moves and cocaine and like philandering men, you know, like, yeah. Right. And like, it's much more of a, like a business now, you know, we have all these major corporations in Broadway. It's just, it's just not as like grungy as it was.

[6:42] Aaron Albano: So do you think the over-exaggeration was warranted because trusting the business itself isn't enough for TV the way the seventies was?

[6:52] Mo Brady: Fosse is much more about the personalities, right? Like, I think what would make a really interesting Broadway show is if they went like the sort of financial money-grubbing producer way, like sort of like money changing hands and backdoor deals. That's more drama than like...

[7:09] Aaron Albano: But there is an aspect where I feel like they try that with Eileen's storyline.

[7:13] Mo Brady: Yeah, but they're trying everything. There's so many stabs in the dark that happen in the show.

[7:18] Aaron Albano: That's real. That's absolutely real.

[7:20] Mo Brady: And they go down an energetic pathway for an episode and then back up the following episode. It does feel like they've storyboarded the 15 seasons, but they haven't talked about sort of what the feeling of the show is.

[7:32] Aaron Albano: Yeah. The one thing that I did think about while I was watching this episode was it felt on the whole, it felt kind of unfocused and that's unfortunate because I do think they sort of had an idea of where they wanted to go, but didn't, whether they were responding to viewership or critics or whatever, it sort of started to lose its way. And now the viewers don't really know what we're watching.

[7:56] Mo Brady: There wasn't a lot of meat to this episode.

[7:59] Aaron Albano: I would agree with that.

[8:00] Mo Brady: But having said that, there's a lot to talk about.

[8:03] Aaron Albano: Yeah, no, totally. What were your favorite ensemble-ist moments in this episode?

[8:07] Mo Brady: One of my favorite, which is a continuation of an old one, an oldie but a goodie, if you will, Manny Santos gives you another clean multiple pirouettes in the middle of the dance number.

[8:19] Aaron Albano: This is the Zanuck number with Christian Borle, right?

[8:20] Mo Brady: This is the Zanuck number featuring composer Tom Levitt. They all do a bunch of tricks or even just jump and land. And he gives you at least three or four pirouettes into an extension into a land that I was again gagging for.

[8:36] Aaron Albano: He's so good.

[8:38] Mo Brady: He's so good. Shout out to Manny Santos.

[8:40] Aaron Albano: That number also to me felt unfocused.

[8:42] Mo Brady: It didn't build.

[8:43] Moe Brady: In the way that I wanted it. There were some issues with that number. And then I found it so funny that they like needed to work on it, but actually they just did it once, completely full out, and they're like, great. And they did it without the actor that it centered around. A, who's the cover for him. Yeah, right, with the understudy go. They've spent the whole episode being like, okay, we need understudies. Karen is the understudy. The episode is called Understudy. And yet there's no understudy. The only person who needs a cover is apparently Marilyn, even though we don't know who any of the other principals are, aside from Arthur Miller, with no covers. Daryl Zanuck, with clearly no covers, unless Tom Levitt is pulling double duty. Oh, and they haven't found a replacement for Michael Swift.

[9:29] Aaron Albano: Oh my god, you're right. See, here we go. These are the holes that take away from the authenticity, which is frustrating. The logic police have no jurisdiction over the journey of Bombshell. But I will say where it loses its authenticity, who I continually love is Bobby and Jessica. Bobby and Jessica. Bobby and Jessica taking bets on whether Karen's gonna get fired or not is so rich. It is the best drama of the show. That's why it's like drama that feels like it's based in reality. Yeah. Versus these back and forth relationships of people in romantic relationships that they don't seem that invested in and that we don't really care about as audience members.

[10:07] Moe Brady: The show feels as though it's unclear on what journey it wants to tell. And it's certainly unclear about how it wants to depict people of the theater. Like, it feels like it wants to depict us as alcoholics and philanderers and people who put their own careers over any other relationship. And yet it also wants us to care about these people. Let's talk about Woke Derek.

[10:36] Aaron Albano: Oh, yes. Let's talk about Woke Derek. Let's talk about Derek apologizing to Karen for his improper behavior. It felt like a good plot point to have. Yeah. It didn't feel authentic in any way. And it didn't feel warranted in any way. Like it didn't I didn't necessarily understand why he was apologizing now. It definitely humanized him whether there was an ulterior motive to it or not. It definitely allowed his leading lady or his leading lady for the moment to trust him more. And I also I thought it was completely shocking that he showed up to her apartment unannounced.

[11:20] Moe Brady: And I'm glad that the show sort of called him on that. Yeah, exactly. But I was like, why do you think it's okay to go to someone's house? How did you get into the building? He loves a good house call for sure. Why does he know where she lives? Like there's so many questions here. But Derek, maybe his maybe his conscience was like really rattling him. Or it was more calculated than I'm giving him credit for.

[11:42] Aaron Albano: Yeah, yeah. But then like, shouldn't the show let us in on that? It doesn't seem calculated. It just seemed like a reason for Dev to catch him coming out of the building so we can have another fistfight. It's a lot of unnecessary action. And hey, Dev isn't part of the business. Maybe this is the passions of non-industry spouses. I don't know. And the more that the show goes on, the more we see how nobody cares about what's going on with Dev. Like all the stuff at City Hall, you're like, who? What? Why does this matter? And if you're trying to make some sort of parallel between what's going on at City Hall and what's going on in theater, like theater is politics, that parallel got lost.

[12:36] Moe Brady: And as his storyline progresses, it just feels more and more forced, which makes me feel like they're just falling apart for no reason. And I can't help but wonder is this because every relationship we've seen on the show that is between someone in the industry and someone not in the industry is going south.

[12:56] Aaron Albano: Oh, yeah, that is definitely an opinion of Smash is that people in the theater cannot have relationships with people outside of the theater because it's showing it time and again. Okay, so let's talk about Rebecca Duvall. She's a movie star who has never done live theater. Now, I did some research as I want to do. Do movie stars who have never done live theater star in musicals? And the answer is mostly not. We see stars in revivals. We see Jake Gyllenhaal on Sunday in the Park with George. We see Jennifer Hudson in The Color Purple, Neil Patrick Harris in Hedwig, Michelle Williams in Cabaret, right? We see we see them over there. They don't have to develop the show. They come into a show that already works, right?

[13:43] Moe Brady: Yes. And when we see a movie star who has never done live theater, it's often somebody that like has, I don't know, is it theater cred? The only people I can think about in the last 10 years were Josh Groban in The Great Comet, George Takei in Allegiance and Zachary Levi in First Date. Those are the only three sort of movie stars and Josh Groban is not a movie star, but he's a star. He's a celebrity who had basically no quote unquote theater cred and came in and starred in a Broadway musical.

[14:17] Aaron Albano: Did First Date happen before or after She Loves Me?

[14:20] Moe Brady: Oh, before. Okay. So this was when he was, this was when Zachary Levi was like famous for Chuck in Tangled, I think. So we knew he could sing because of Tangled, right?

[14:37] Aaron Albano: And George Takei, he didn't sing in Allegiance, right? He sort of sang in Allegiance. He diet sang, right? And Josh Groban, we knew he could sing. We knew he's a singer. Yes. Right. So this idea that they're pegging this entire musical around this movie star who has never done live theater before to play, it just feels like the most far-fetched part in a lot of- I feel like it's more common in plays. Sure. Tons of plays. Sure. Yeah. Everything at Roundabout has a celebrity in it, right?

[15:11] Moe Brady: Yeah. And so I think it's twofold. A, she's a movie star who has never done live theater. And B, I think it's safe to assume through that sentence, she's also a movie star who's never done a musical. Would the show have been better if they would have made the character a recording artist who had never done a musical? Because then they get more songs. They'd get to come in. Jennifer Hudson comes in. She sings the songs. I mean, she kills it, right? Then we get, yeah. The idea that it's this movie star, this like, I don't know. I mean, but the whole reason for them to cast a non-singer, quote unquote, non-live theater person is that she can't hack it and her understudy has to go on at the end of the day. Or that's the risk that we're at this point supposed to believe in. Correct?

[16:00] Aaron Albano: Yeah. But the show isn't showing us that we are supposed to be concerned about the viability of Rebecca Duvall to play Marilyn. The only thing that we're supposed to know about Rebecca Duvall is that she's famous and both Ivy Lynn and Karen Cartwright are not famous. Yes. Celebrity will sell tickets, but at what cost, Aaron Albano? At what cost?

[16:22] Moe Brady: All right. Well, special thanks to Aaron Albano for joining us producing this mini-series. The Ensemblist was produced today by Aaron Albano and me, Moe Brady. To keep up to date with next week's recap, be sure to watch episode 11 of Smash entitled The Movie Star, aka Uma Thurman's grand entrance. You can find Smash episodes on either the NBC app or the YouTube app.

[16:46] Moe Brady: Please help others find out about The Ensemblist by leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. You can also download episodes wherever you get your podcasts or at BroadwayPodcastNetwork.com. Are you enjoying this Smash mini-series? If you are, let us know. You can follow The Ensemblist on Instagram or our website where we share stories of talented artists working in Broadway ensembles. Thanks for listening, guys. Until next time. Bye.