Hear Rachel Bloom explain how Crazy Ex-Girlfriend came to TV in exclusive book excerpt
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Gregg DeGuire/Getty Images; Hodder & Stoughton
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend has a genesis befitting of its title.
In her new book, I Want to Be Where the Normal People Are, star and co-creator Rachel Bloom recounts the intense four days during which the series went from being dead in the water to being sped into production in time to make the fall TV schedule. EW shares an exclusive clip, titled "Aline Hold My Underwear," from the audiobook of Bloom's new essay collection below.
AlineHoldMyUnderwear_clip
The CW show, the brainchild of Bloom and co-creator Aline Brosh McKenna, went from being basically caput to a feature fall title within a span of only four days, during which Bloom found herself on a plane to New York City to promote the show at the yearly television up-fronts.
In the end, the musical-comedy series, which earned accolades for its complex depiction of mental illness, landed four seasons and even earned Bloom a Golden Globe for her performance (as well as Emmy Awards for choreography and songwriting). And it landed Bloom a book deal. The result was I Want to Be Where the Normal People Are, a collection of essays.
In addition to recounting the experience of bringing Crazy Ex-Girlfriend to the screen, the book is bursting with personal essays, poems, and even monologues and amusement park maps that delve into everything from bullying to fame to insecurity to anxiety and more. The book also pays tribute to a fallen member of the Crazy Ex-Girlfriend family, songwriter Adam Schlesinger who died from complications from COVID-19 earlier this year. The book is dedicated to him and addresses his loss in the epilogue.
"Because I had a TV show, I got a book deal because life is inherently unfair," Bloom quips to EW. "It was this ass-backwards thing of, 'Okay I have a book deal, what am I going to write a book about?' What I realized was, for years I've been doing storytelling shows, and there are these special stories I've always wanted to do more with, that don't quite fit into anything else that I do. That was the jumping-off point."
Bloom certainly pays plenty of homage to the television series that changed her life in the book -- whether it's this chapter specifically reflecting on the show's journey and her partnership with McKenna or just the overall tone and themes of the book itself.
"In the same way in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, where there's a heightened emotion and you burst into a song, in this book when I'm dealing with my heightened emotions from an essay, I then pull that out and go into a sketch," she adds. "I see the non-essay pieces in this book as written sketches."
Listen to the clip above for more. I Want to Be Where the Normal People Are is available today.
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