Interviews

Interview: Yee Honk! Cinco Paul's Schmigadoon! TV Series Takes Its Rightful Place on the Stage

The Kennedy Center’s Broadway Center Stage series presents the world premiere musical later this month.

David Gordon

David Gordon

| Maryland | Virginia | Washington, DC |

January 13, 2025

The Apple TV+ series Schmigadoon! was a balm for theater lovers in the middle of the pandemic: a musical television series that poked fun at Golden Age classics like Oklahoma! and Carousel, featuring a company loaded with Broadway stars who had stages to perform upon.

Schmigadoon!, created by Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio, was short-lived: it only got a pair of six-episode seasons, with a third that was fully written, composed, and cast despite Apple pulling the plug. But Paul took his broken heart and turned it into art: he crafted a stage production out of Schmigadoon!‘s first season, telling the story of a pair of big-city doctors whose relationship troubles come to a head when they land in the magical, musical world of Schmigadoon, and get stuck there until they find true love.

The theatrical version of Schmigadoon! has its world premiere beginning January 31 as part of the Kennedy Center’s Broadway Center Stage series. Directed and choreographed by Christopher Gattelli, it, too, has an enviable cast: Alex Brightman, Sara Chase, Emily Skinner, Ann Harada [reprising her turn as Florence Menlove from the screen], Brad Oscar, the list goes on and on. And Paul, who penned the script and score, is thrilled to be going on the ride once more.

032123 Photo Call Musical Comedy Schmigadoon Inline Image 04
Cinco Paul
(© Apple TV Plus)

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

At what point in the history of Schmigadoon! did you start thinking about a stage version?
Initially, it was during the strike when I started thinking that I’ll do a stage adaptation. I would love for high schools to do it. That was my intent: It would make me so happy if high schools were doing Schmigadoon! But then I showed it to Broadway Video, the producers, and they said they thought there was more life for it. Once word got out, there was quite a bit of interest, then the Kennedy Center reached out, and here we are.

Tell me about how you broke the show down into stage format, and what we can expect.
I will say that initially there was way too much of a tv mindset. I just sort of plugged all the scripts in and was cutting back and forth a lot between locations. Someone commented on an early draft I needed to do more. That was a real wakeup call, and I did a big rewrite to make it work. I’ve written stage musicals before this, but it took a while to get myself out of that mindset.

It’s basically the first season turned into a stage musical. I don’t think it’s any secret that we originally wrote eight episodes and Apple only wanted to do six, so there was a Danny Bailey [Aaron Tveit on screen, Ryan Vasquez on stage] subplot that had to completely go away. I brought him back in a more significant way in the stage version. There are three or four new songs. People that are familiar with the tv show will find some surprises, but it basically follows the same trajectory and story as the first season.

Was it a conscious decision to get all new actors?
Early on, it was clear that some of our major cast members, like Cecily Strong and Keegan-Michael Key, were not available, and I thought that it would feel weird to do half and half. That’s when we decided to get all new people. It would also test the material to see if it can survive.

Sara Chase did a workshop for us, and she blew me away. She’s so funny and so real, and she really is like the stage version of Cecily in so many ways. She’s her own thing, obviously, but she has all those skills that Cecily has. I’ve known Emily Skinner for a while; she did a workshop of an earlier musical I wrote called Bubble Boy, and she did some readings of Schmigadoon! before it was a series when we presented it to Apple. She’s actually the first one to ever sing “Tribulation,” and I know she’s going to kill it because I’ve heard her sing it.

And then Ann Harada raised her hand and said she wanted to do it, and who would ever say no to Ann Harada? Ann is going to have the distinction of being in every iteration of Schmigadoon!

Schmigadoon Photo 010107
Fred Armisen, Kristin Chenoweth, Alan Cumming, and Ann Harada in the television series Schmigadoon!
(© Apple TV Plus)

I remember when you were shooting the first season and how nobody got to see each other because you were all in Covid bubbles. It must be very refreshing now to get to have everyone in the room together.
We wrote the first season before Covid happened and I had this vision that we were all going to hang out together and I’ll be at the piano and we’ll do singalongs. It was going to be the greatest musical-theater camp ever. I got to interact with everybody, but unfortunately, they didn’t get to interact with each other. No one was able to witness everybody else’s work. But this time, we will, and I could not be more excited.

So, tell me about the season three that wasn’t.
It’s all written. All the songs are written. We had parts for everyone in the cast. Alan Cumming has basically revealed that his character was kind of Jean Valjean and the Phantom mixed together, and there was a even a little bit of Secret Garden in his story. It was going to be called Into the Schmoods, and we were going to do Cats, Into the Woods, Phantom, Sunday, Side Show, Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast. Little Shop was very prominently featured.

Who was your Audrey II?
Patrick Page was going to voice our version of Audrey II. It was not going to be a carnivorous plant. There was going to be a lot of puppetry. I don’t think I’ve revealed this online, but there was going to be Princess Bride in there too, because we’re in this fantasy medieval world. We drew from Labyrinth quite a bit, as well, because Labyrinth was a musical. David Bowie sang songs, so it counts. Martin Short was going to play a Goblin King-esque character.

Is it just done? Is there any hope?
There have been talks about doing some sort of gala event like what they did with Ragtime, where we present all six episodes live. So, I still have hopes that it’ll get out there at some point.

Schmigadoon Photo 010601
Schmigadoon! ran in 2021-2023 on Apple TV+.
(© Apple TV Plus)

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