‘Schmigadoon!’ gang surfaces in North Hollywood for spirited Emmy FYC event

Ray Richmond
Updated ·6 min read

The cast and production team of the Apple TV+ hit musical comedy series “Schmigadoon!” that dropped its second season on the streamer April 5 beat a tuneful path to the TV Academy’s Saban Media Center in North Hollywood on a drizzly Thursday night, with castmates Cecily Strong, Keegan-Michael Key, Dove Cameron, Jane Krakowski, Aaron Tveit, Tituss Burgess and Jaime Camil joining co-creator/exec producer/showrunner Cinco Paul and exec producer Andrew Singer for a spirited screening and panel event.

The show received four Emmy nominations in 2022 to mark its first season, including for its production design, music composition, chorography and original music and lyrics, winning a trophy for the latter. And while continuing to build an audience in season two, there’s already talk of a third season, as Singer confirmed on the red carpet (actually a wooden carpet after everyone moved indoors to avoid the raindrops) that Apple had already commissioned scripts while the production team awaits an official greenlight.

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SEE‘Schmigadoon!’ pays tribute to Oscar and Tony champ ‘Chicago’ in acclaimed second season

“Our fingers are crossed (for Season 3),” Singer said. “When we started on Season 1, we were one of the first productions during the pandemic, before the vaccine, and a lot of the Broadway community wasn’t working. By Season 2, everyone was back, but fortunately they had a good enough time in the first season that we convinced them to return even though they had so many other options.”

And if there is a third season? Paul later teased, “I’m a huge (Stephen) Sondheim fan, so…’Sunday in the Park with George,’ ‘Into the Woods,’ love those with all my heart.”

“Schmigadoon!” is a parody of, and satirical, loving homage to, the stage musicals of the past. It’s chock full of original musical production numbers, all crafted by Paul. The original concept starred Strong and Key as Melissa and Josh, married doctors on a backpacking trip designed to patch up their failing marriage who stumble into a town stuck inside a musical. It continues into the second season, which now finds the couple more blissful but bored as they and their fellow cast members navigate the darker, edgier town of Schmicago in a season-long sendup of the 1960s and ’70s musical world.

SEE‘Schmigadoon!’ cast should be Emmy bound as Season 2 travels to Schmicago

Among the shows paid lampooning salute in the second season are “Chicago,” “Sweet Charity,” “Pippin,” Hair,” “Cabaret,“ “Company,” “A Chorus Line” and “Sweeney Todd.”

Krakowski, a 2003 Tony Award winner as Best Featured Actress in a Musical for “Nine” who plays lawyer Bobbie Flanagan on the show, confirmed that “Schmigadoon!” rescued the theatre community at a time when it had no live stage option due to COVID. “To get to do musical theatre when none was happening was the kind of love the show was born in,” she told Gold Derby in an exclusive carpet chat. “When we started, it was the only musical you could see. But it continues, and we are like this special hybrid group who get to do this incredibly niche show that people are now discovering and watching.”

The specialness of the enterprise certainly resonates with Burgess, who joined “Schmigadoon!” in the second season as The Narrator. He grew sentimental when discussing how his performance on the show is designed as an homage to stage legend Ben Vereen. “My whole performance was a love letter to him, to thank him for how much he crafted my purview of what musical theatre was,” he told Gold Derby’s social media manager Jaclyn Ben-Porat, “and it was possible for a young queer boy of color to do this onstage. He quite literally made a way for me to enter into a world that I didn’t think wanted me.”

SEEKeegan-Michael Key and ‘Schmigadoon!’ cast on ‘privilege’ of performing showtunes during the pandemic

Meanwhile, when Key was irreverently reminded about how well his acting career was going – he was starring on two series at once, “Reboot” and “Schmigadoon!” – when compared to the non-existent TV life of his ex-“Key & Peele” partner Jordan Peele, he felt compelled to note that poor Jordan wasn’t part of the Emmy conversation at all. Did he ever call his buddy to prop him up and give him reassurance that his time would come?

“You know, I’m so proud of him, but it’s not going so well,” Key deadpanned, continuing forth with the joke. “I tell him, ‘You’ll get an Emmy eventually if you ever do television again’.” Then he turned serious in noting of his Oscar-winning feature writer-director pal, “I really am just so proud of him, to love his work as much as he does and be lauded for it. And I just couldn’t be happier for him.”

SEECecily Strong looking for 3rd and final supporting Emmy nom for ‘Saturday Night Live’ … or she could submit in guest

Well, it turns out that Key actually could be happier for him. While the two of them recently voiced an animated feature together – last year’s “Wendell & Wild” – Peele hasn’t yet found a way to cast his former sketch comedy series co-star in one of his features. “The track that we’re on is that we do animated films together (but that’s it),” he said. Key joked about it on Thursday but, when asked why he hadn’t been asked to do live-action by Peele, replied sincerely, “I’ll ask him.”

On the other hand, Key also admitted on the wood carpet that he’s rarely if ever had a better time on a project than he did during the second “Schmigadoon!” season because “they let me dance and sing this time. The first season, it was killing me (not to do it). It was torture. I had to pretend I didn’t like musical theatre.” Strong – who now sits in ninth place in Gold Derby’s combined odds among lead comedy actresses – loves musical theatre too. But the dancing part? Not so much. As she acknowledged on the wood Thursday night, “(For me), it’s smoke and mirrors. We have an amazing choreographer who I tried to butter up both seasons to go easy on me.”

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