Bernadette Peters Will Be In Tunick on Second Season of Smash

We still don’t know many specifics about Tony Award winner Bernadette Peters’ return to NBC’s Smash this season as Broadway grande dame Leigh Conroy, mother to aspiring star Ivy Lynn (played by Megan Hilty). But now we know she will record an original song for the series by Tony winners Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman and orchestrated by Tony winner Jonathan Tunick on Tuesday, October 23.

Shaiman, who is celebrating his birthday today, posted the news on his Facebook page: “My birthday present this year will arrive one day late but well worth the delay, for it is the fact that Bernadette Peters will be filming an original song of ours tomorrow on SMASH. With a Jonathan Tunick orchestration! Musical theatre heaven. So I can die happy. (And no, I have no idea when SMASH starts airing, don’t bother asking!”).

Shaiman and Wittman are the show’s primary composer-lyricists and received two Emmy Award nominations earlier this year for their work on the series.

Peters and Tunick have a decades-long history. They worked together on the 1969 Off-Broadway hit Dames at Sea, and have collaborated numerous times since then, including the original 1997 Broadway production of Into the Woods and on Peters’ 2002 recording, Bernadette Peters Loves Rodgers & Hammerstein.

In addition to Hilty and Peter, second-season cast members of Smash will include Debra Messing, Christian Borle, Anjelica Huston, Megan Hilty, Katharine McPhee, Jack Davenport, Leslie Odom, Jr. Jennifer Hudson, Jesse L. Martin, Nikki Blonsky, Jeremy Jordan, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Daniel Sunjata, Andy Mientus, Daphne Rubin-Vega, and Krysta Rodriguez.