Songwriters Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman share untold stories from Sister Act , Hairspray , Smash , and more

Songwriters Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman share untold stories from Sister Act , Hairspray , Smash , and more
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Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman sparked both a personal and professional relationship in the 1970s after meeting in the East Village club scene.

"One day we said, 'Let's write a musical,'" Wittman tells EW of building a show with Shaiman for their creative home at the time, Club 57, where they hung out with the likes of Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. "So we wrote a musical about Barbie and Ken, that was the beginning of really kind of writing together."

Although their personal relationship would come to an end in the mid-2000s, that early Barbie musical sparked decades of collaboration that continues to this day, with the duo currently nominated for Best Score at the 2023 Tony Awards for Some Like It Hot and work underway to adapt their music from NBC's Smash into a new Broadway musical slated for next year.

Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, winners for Best Musical Show Album
Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, winners for Best Musical Show Album

M. Caulfield/WireImage Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman accepting their Grammy for the original Broadway cast recording of 'Hairspray'

Here, Shaiman and Wittman discuss their shared successes — including Hairspray, Mary Poppins Returns, and Marvel's Rogers: The Musical — as well as their individual endeavors, such as the Sister Act movies, Patti LuPone's concerts, First Wives Club, and more.

Bette Midler (1977- )

When Shaiman and Wittman first met, Wittman lived across the hall from Bette Midler's backup singers. The neighbors developed a friendship, with Shaiman — still in his teens — eventually becoming the musical director for their cabaret show in between Midler productions.

"Then Bette Midler said, 'Girls, come back on the road with me and I'll let you open the act.' So suddenly my ultimate dream of working with Bette Midler happened right as I moved to New York. It was beyond belief," says Shaiman, who would go on to be Midler's musical director and work on many of her films (including the Hocus Pocus movies) and albums, co-producing her hits "The Wind Beneath My Wings," "From a Distance," and more. "We immediately fell into a kind of brother-sister relationship, with all the good and bad that brings. We fight like brother and sister and we love each other like brother and sister."

"We remain great friends," adds Wittman, who has co-written some of Midler's acts, including for her most recent tour. "We go on vacations together and she's one of the great laughs. To get a laugh out of her is one of the great joys in life."

Saturday Night Live (1984-1989)

Shaiman says he was recruited by Saturday Night Live musical director Tom Malone, "who was a great musician. He plays everything, but he doesn't play piano — and he's not Jewish. And you can't put on a comedy show without a Jewish person at the piano."

The arranger/writer "laughed and laughed" with cast members Christopher Guest, Billy Crystal, and Martin Short, but Shaiman says his biggest claim to SNL fame stemmed from when "Jan Hooks and Nora Dunn knocked on my door and said, 'We want to do these characters…a bad lounge act.'" The end result was the Sweeney Sisters, recurring sketch characters with an accompanist, Skip St. Thomas, portrayed by Shaiman. The Sisters act even got to open the 1988 Emmy Awards.

After leaving the series, he continued his friendship and creative partnership with Crystal and Martin, becoming a mainstay at the latter's annual Christmas parties in Los Angeles.

"They were truly what you dream of a Hollywood party, like what they used to have when Judy Garland would be at the piano," says Shaiman, who would actually go over with Wittman and rehearse "impromptu" musical performances with Short. "Marty would make me push the piano out to make me look desperate. And then he would sit on top of it and it would be these great Hollywood parties."

"Marty has such alchemy, he can make almost anything funny," adds Wittman, who co-conceived Short's 2006 Broadway show, Fame Becomes Me, with Shaiman. "We wrote an entire score that was all jokes," Wittman says of Fame. "And that's hard."

Sister Act (1992)

After serving as music supervisor and/or scoring films Beaches, When Harry Met Sally, Misery, City Slickers, and more, Shaiman was eager to bring more "theatricality" into his work, so he felt "very lucky" that producer Scott Rudin (whom he worked with on the Addams Family movies, Life with Mikey, In & Out, and more) asked him to help craft a movie about a nightclub singer who reinterprets girl-group songs.

Well, reinterprets songs that sound like girl-group songs.

The original Sister Act screenwriter Paul Rudnick has written a version of the script including songs like "Chapel of Love" and "Your Love Keeps Lifting Me Higher," but "every single song he had in the script, they couldn't get the rights to because they had not fully figured out VHS rights yet" for older songs, says Shaiman. "So they told me, 'Okay, Marc, help us choose new songs. But it can't be anything from 1963 on.' I was like, 'It's about '60s girl groups. What are you talking about?!'"

What he developed was a musical lineup of biblical proportions. "When the movie opened, it was such a success," says Shaiman, scheduled to get on the phone about Sister Act 3 the day after this interview. "I remember peeking out my window every day waiting for Disney to deliver a car with a big ribbon on it. It never came," he adds with a laugh.

Patti LuPone (1993- )

"I met her when she was on [the 1989-1993 ABC sitcom] Life Goes On," Wittman says of the musical-theater legend. "Someone brought her to a party and she said, 'I feel like singing.' So I said, 'Okay.' And she said, 'Well, everyone says you should do a show for me.' I said, 'Okay.' And so we started getting together and she would come to the house and sing. And then before I knew it, the show was at the Geffen Playhouse in Westwood. And then the next thing I knew it was on Broadway," he says of what would become the 1995 one-woman show Patti LuPone on Broadway.

"I've done almost every concert or any time she's sung publicly outside of a role since about 1994. In fact, we're working now on a new show for Carnegie Hall for next April," he says of LuPone, who has also worked with Shaiman over the years. "It's a long relationship, and a great fun one. I've never had one bad moment with her my entire life."

The First Wives Club (1996)

"It was a joy, of course, to work with all those ladies, but they all also had very strong opinions that weren't always the same," Shaiman says of orchestrating a movie-ending musical moment with Bette Midler, Diane Keaton, and Goldie Hawn performing "You Don't Own Me."

"Deciding on that song, and then recording and getting them to learn the harmonies and all that, it took a while, but it was so good when it happened," he says.

Adding a musical number to a non-musical comedy was a strong choice, and Shaiman admits he and producer Scott Rudin left the first rough-cut screening of the movie "with our heads in our hands. I remember saying to him, 'Maybe just release it right away and be done with it.' But it was the greatest lesson I ever had in movie editing because they took what we watched that day and built a rhythm — they cut out a whole subplot and turned it into this brilliant movie."

Hairspray (2002)

Fresh off his Best Song Oscar nomination for South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut, Shaiman was approached by producer Margo Lion about adapting John Waters' 1988 film of the same name for the stage. He suggested Wittman as his co-lyricist and the duo set out to write a few songs as an audition. They say "Good Morning Baltimore," "Welcome to the 60's," "Big, Blonde, and Beautiful," and "I Know Where I've Been" just "poured" out of them in the process.

"I think it was because our sense of humor was so aligned with John Waters," Wittman says of their Tony-winning Hairspray score. "For 'Good Morning Baltimore,' I said to Marc, 'I think it should open like Oklahoma. Like, 'Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin,' only it's Baltimore. Everything was to make John laugh in a way."

Catch Me If You Can (2011)

The Broadway adaptation of Stephen Spielberg's 2002 movie of the same "was a great joy to start working on," says Shaiman. We really thought it was so in the pocket for us. I mean, it was the '60s again, but a whole other part of the '60s — that more Frank Sinatra, Rat Pack part of the '60s. And we love that so much, just as much as the kind of '60s pop of Hairspray, but it just never quite..."

"Well, The Book of Mormon opened the night before, so that did had a lot to do with it," Wittman interjects, referencing Catch Me If You Can's short six-month run (though the songwriting team did score a Tony nomination for Best Orchestration). "What appealed to us too was the idea of writing a musical about fathers and sons, and the fathers you choose and the fathers you're given," he explains. "It was appealing to try and untangle that story in that way, and the chase aspect of it as well."

NBC's Smash (2012-2013)

The first episode of NBC's musical drama about the making of a Marilyn Monroe Broadway musical is regarded by many as one of the best pilots of all time. "We just all thought, 'My God, we did it!' And we were just so high on the mountaintop," Shaiman recalls of the early feedback. "And then, of course, came the toboggan and down the mountain, where unfortunately all the minds that put together that pilot suddenly splintered and everyone had different ideas of what it should be or could be."

Wittman says the showrunners originally wanted the show within the show "to be, like, The Three Musketeers. And I said, 'Oh my God, are we going to write all those songs and those big skirts and fans? That's Sondheim territory.' So I was like, 'What if it's about Marilyn Monroe?' And that was the only time in my whole life where everyone in the room went, 'That's it. Let's do that.'"

"Certainly the only time on Smash," adds Shaiman, who garnered three Emmy nominations during the run of the show (two with Wittman for Original Music and Lyrics and a solo nomination for Music Composition).

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2017)

"We wanted to work with [director] Sam Mendes and that was really the big attraction," Shaiman says of signing on to an adaptation of Roald Dahl's 1964 book. Another attraction was that "the Dahl estate notoriously was not a fan" of the 1971 movie adaptation, so he and Wittman were tasked with producing completely original songs for the production that premiered in London's West End in the summer of 2013. So when they started the project, they wanted it to be all original music. "They didn't want any hangover from the film," he explains.

At least at first. "One day we were walking in, and like in The Godfather, they pull us aside and they say, 'We have to put in 'Pure Imagination,'" Shaiman says of being asked to add in a song from the film. "And so we felt like Fredo. Once that is in the story, your score starts to dissipate. But I really loved working with Sam and I have a friendship with him to this day."

After running more than three years in the West End, a revamped version of the show was headed to Broadway — with Mendes stepping back into solely a producer role and Jack O'Brien coming in to direct, and even more songs from the film added in, including "The Candy Man" and "I've Got a Golden Ticket."

"Broadway was another story," says Wittman. "But London, I enjoyed."

Mary Poppins Returns (2018)

Shaiman says he grew up listening to the Mary Poppins record "endlessly," so when it was announced Rob Marshall was directing a sequel... "I don't know what I would've done if we hadn't gotten that job. I honestly don't know what would've become of me."

Wittman adds that it was a "great joy" to spend three months rehearsing and workshopping with stars Emily Blunt, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Meryl Streep. But getting nominated for a Best Song Oscar for "The Place Where Lost Things Go" (his first Academy Award nomination, seventh for Shaiman, who was also nominated for Mary Poppins Return's score) brought a whole new level of pride — though perhaps not for the reason you'd expect.

The nominated song was performed by Blunt's Mary Poppins in the film, but Shaiman and Wittman's old collaborator Bette Midler was tapped to sing it during the Oscars ceremony.

"Bette Midler was, to me, like Mary Poppins. Those are the two biggest things from my childhood: one of my preteens, and one when I was a teenager. Bette Midler and her albums became everything to me. She replaced Mary Poppins on my little turntable in my little room. So the ultimate full circle of having Bette Midler sing a song that we wrote for the sequel to Mary Poppins is beyond words."

"Better than the Oscar," muses Wittman. "I wouldn't mind the Oscar," Shaiman quickly replies.

Rogers: The Musical from Hawkeye (2021)

"First of all, I had never seen any of them, so I had to watch all of them. And they're long. Those movies are long," Wittman says of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which he and Shaiman became a part of when Kevin Feige asked them to craft a song for a fictional musical about Steve Rogers, a.k.a. Captain America. "But I'm an opera fan, so I just looked at it like I was watching Wagner. It took a while, but I got into them. I finally said, 'It's like the Ring cycle,'" he adds, referencing Wagner's epic four-opera saga.

Originally featured in the Disney+ series Hawkeye, Wittman and Shaiman's Rogers song "Save the City" is now the centerpiece of a one-act musical set to debut at Disney California Adventure on June 30.

"I've been elevated to a new state of husbandry — because my husband, Lou, is a full Marvel nerd," says Shaiman, who recalls being tapped on the shoulder at the Mary Poppins Returns premiere and being told Feige wanted to meet with him. "I thought, 'Is this a practical joke? Did Lou call someone?' But it turns out Kevin Feige is a big film score nerd, so I suddenly had an email relationship with Kevin Feige."

The Music Man (2022)

"We hardly speak of it because we were tarred and feathered for being part of the 'wokeness' that had them ask us to rewrite," Shaiman says of he and Wittman updating some of Meredith Willson's lyrics from the original 1957 Music Man production for the latest revival starring Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster. "But of all the songs in the classic musical theater canon, 'Shipoopi' is not one up there that I think anyone would think is untouchable."

"It wasn't like they said we should rewrite 'Till There Was You,'" adds Wittman. "And, we worked with the Meredith Willson estate, so they were also very much a part of it because they felt it needed that as well."

"The song is date-rapey," Shaiman says of "Shipoopi." "And that show was opening right at the height of Harvey Weinstein and all that, so we got it — and we were honored that we were asked to do it. And I still think we did a good job, although I have some of our other lyrics that didn't get chosen because we just threw a lot of lyrics at them and some of them were really outrageous. Someday we'll print those."

Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster
Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster

Some Like It Hot (2022)

When Smash producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron became part of the team who secured the rights to Some Like It Hot, they knew Shaiman and Wittman were the perfect pair to help update the classic 1959 film about two men who dress up as women to join an all-female band.

In fact, the duo even use a song from Smash season 1 to open act 2 of the new musical. "We'd written 'Let's Be Bad' on Smash for a multiverse version of Some Like It Hot," Shaiman explains. "It's about Marilyn Monroe showing how she was just trying to say 'f--- you' to all authority. Since we had already dipped our toes into that water, Craig and Neil just thought we'd be the perfect guys to write the score — but we all knew it had to have so much other stuff added to it."

"We couldn't just put the movie on stage, it had to have a contemporary view to it. And it had to have the politics of today involved. That was the only reason to do it, because previously there had been a screen-to-stage version, and it was the movie on stage," Wittman explains, referencing the 1972 Broadway musical Sugar.

"We're in a bad place in the world right now, where people's lives are being threatened because of who they feel they are inside," continues Wittman, whose Some Like It Hot includes a script written by Matthew López and Amber Ruffin and a diverse but not color-blind cast. "It was an important story to tell."

As for the 13 Tony nominations the production received?

"The morning to the Tony nominations, that was a wonderful day. It's like someone patting you on the head and saying, 'Good job,'" Shaiman explains. "We can't be blase about that. As much as I might try to find the negative — I will always — that day I really was hard-pressed to not be overjoyed about that kind of reception."

"The reception of the audience every night is pretty amazing too," adds Wittman. "So it's fun to go there at the end. As they're walking out, they're dancing in the aisles, which doesn't happen very often anymore. It's nice to have that feeling."

Bette Midler, Goldie Hawn, Diane Keaton on First Wives Club; Harvey Firestein in the stage production of Hairspray; Christian Borle on broadway musical some like it hot; Whoopi Goldberg in Sister Act
Bette Midler, Goldie Hawn, Diane Keaton on First Wives Club; Harvey Firestein in the stage production of Hairspray; Christian Borle on broadway musical some like it hot; Whoopi Goldberg in Sister Act

Shutterstock / Getty Images / Everett Collection 'Some Like It Hot,' 'First Wives Club,' 'Sister Act,' 'Hairspray'

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