When was smash on

Episode guide. Play trailer Drama Musical. Creator Theresa Rebeck. Top credits Creator Theresa Rebeck. See more at IMDbPro. Episodes Browse episodes. Top Top-rated. Clip Smash: Karen Sings. Smash: Never Give Up. Smash: Rewrite. Smash: Terry Cuts Ivy's Number. Smash: Liza And Tom Sing. Smash: Terry's Off.

Smash: In An Elevator. Smash: A Prelude. Smash: Break A Leg. Photos Top cast Edit. Savannah Wise Jessica as Jessica. Wesley Taylor Bobby as Bobby. Jenny Laroche Dancer as Dancer …. Keith Kuhl Dancer as Dancer. Leslie Odom Jr.

Sam Strickland as Sam Strickland. Ann Harada Linda as Linda. Joshua Bergasse Josh as Josh. Theresa Rebeck. More like this. Watch options. Storyline Edit. For a Broadway musical, the road to success is not easy.

And winning the coveted Tony as Best Musical, which is the ultimate goal, is even more difficult. Such trials and tribulations are shown for a handful of shows, their creative teams and their performers. There's no conflict there. Lack of complexity in the characters and in the obstacles they faced turned out to be Smash 's worst — or best, if you were watching it as an accidental comedy — attribute. Ellis, the bisexual, homicidal villain, and Leo, the whiny stoner son, became absurd.

And the actor? And even more surprising, another source said that after the pilot was shot, "Spielberg's big push was to recast Megan Hilty" — who was unquestionably one of the only true, unironic bright spots of Smash. In the messy panic of preventing that mistake, especially one dictated by the Oz-like Spielberg himself, "there was so much discussion about Megan Hilty that Ellis just got on the show," said the source.

As for Leo, auditions were held to recast Cohen. But in the end, he kept the part. And anyway, it's hard to know whether the one-dimensional, farcical qualities to both Leo and Ellis were the actors' faults: A source blames the absence of a writers' room. Neither character will be back in Season 2. I requested comments from Cohen through his manager, who wrote back, "He is not comfortable talking about Smash as his focus now is his feature film career.

Preposterous side characters are one thing. But Julia — who started out as Smash 's star — also fell into caricature. Messing's wardrobe , with a focus on her scarves, became a meme — the parody Twitter account of the Julia character lists "Scarf Aficionada" in the bio. But Julia faced bigger bumps than her unflattering clothing; Rebeck based the character on herself, and yet wouldn't allow Julia to have a good arc that would satisfy or endear her to the audience.

If the writers wanted to give Julia something to do that was hard and that she would eventually get through, "Theresa would say, 'It's not a struggle! She doesn't have a problem! She's the hero! She saves everything! Another source added: "The writer had such a strong identification with that character that she couldn't actually write well for her, or allow interesting stories to develop. The writers were trying to push into more interesting territory for that character, and Theresa blocked that creatively.

Even if she might think, Well, I wanted Debra Messing to be the star, she didn't allow that to happen. If the adoption storyline played out in a ludicrous way, no one could do anything about it, since it was based on Rebeck's life. Because it was very loaded. The Smash office was not a happy place. She sees herself as a victim.

It is common for a showrunner to feel victimized — she's not the first. She would retell a lot of the fights, and it was a little tricky to know who was to blame. He was the one who was totally blameless in this scenario. One source, who still likes Rebeck personally, said, "For all of her mistakes as showrunner, and there were a few big ones, she was working under impossible conditions.

Every television show has a network and a studio, and, except in rare cases of creative freedom HBO is known to leave its creators alone , the showrunner has to listen to both. Smash had — and has — many people chiming in. It's an insane menagerie. Since Smash was Greenblatt's baby, he "gave even minor production decisions a great deal of attention," said a source. Another person who worked on the production side said he would weigh in on things as tiny as fabric swatches for the Marilyn costume, and he would have conference calls about how the dailies — the footage shot each day — were going.

On the other hand, added this source, he had "all great suggestions. Other people I spoke with echoed that sentiment — that they would pray Greenblatt would stop Rebeck.

Zadan and Meron were non-writing producers there to lure talent to the show like Uma Thurman, who did a Season 1 arc as a movie star who ends up playing Marilyn for awhile, leapfrogging over Ivy and Karen. They were also supposed to serve a diplomatic purpose. One person said: "They were the ones who were supposed to be middlemen for a lot of the shenanigans that were going on. Especially in the case of Theresa Rebeck, who had no people skills, and no desire to smooth things over with anyone, they of course clashed horribly.

That person continued: "They play all sides of the game. We've seen them stab everyone in the back depending on who's in the room at the time.

And what their agenda is at that moment. They work for themselves. The DreamWorks guys, Falvey and Frank, were there to be Spielberg's representatives, but ended up shielding him from how bad things were getting. Everybody was spinning around as the money was spent. The work environment was toxic, the show wasn't good, and everyone was worn down. In the one interview in which she has discussed her Smash experience, Rebeck told The New York Observer in November, "One of the points of contention last year was that the network thinks they have the right to say to the writer of the show, 'We don't want her to do this.

We want her to do this. You don't own it. Just do it. If there's anything everyone agrees on, it is that yes, there were no true discussions — and in the end, Rebeck fought everyone off. Nobody wanted to deal with her to the point that Bob didn't want to deal with her! It was a given that it would be renewed. Hours after that happened last March, Deadline broke the news that Rebeck would "depart" because she was "stepping down.

Another source put it differently. When I emailed with Theresa Rebeck to ask her to talk with me, she wrote, "Listen, Kate, I was told to keep my mouth shut because it was in fact an explosive situation, and I was treated quite badly. If you were a Smash viewer, how you'll feel about the rebooted show depends on why you liked it in the first place. If you enjoyed its forehead-slapping journeys into John Waters—adjacent territory, you will probably be sad.

NBC sent out the first three hours the two-hour Monday premiere and the Feb. Safran, the new showrunner, and an almost all-new writing staff, have ditched the problematic characters Leo and Ellis aren't alone in the trash heap; Dev is also gone; and Julia's husband, Frank, isn't around long either , and there are new ones played by musical theater performers Jeremy Jordan and Andy Mientus who aren't silly. A second musical is added to the plot — one that brings the original music and pop culture references out of Marilyn Monroe's s America to, if not today's Book of Mormon world, at least to Jonathan Larson's Rent era.

At a press conference for Smash in early January, Safran was diplomatic about the first season. He repeatedly said things like, "I don't really think it's changed that much," which is not actually true, but the official NBC stance seems to be to act like not much was wrong and there just needed to be a few adjustments. At one point, Meron, who was also on the panel, was asked about replacing Rebeck, and he said: "She always had plays going, and her focus was very, very much taken up by a lot of her other loves, which included the theater.

And so it was a decision that just came down the pike. There is a funny, self-referential recurring plot device in the premiere, which is that the Marilyn musical, having had its out-of-town tryout in Boston at the end of the first season, is well on its way to being launched on Broadway — except that its story, as written by Julia, Rebeck's alter ego, is bad.

As worded by the fictional version of the New York Post 's real-life theater columnist, Michael Riedel, who, oddly, has become an occasional character on the show, "In her unfocused hands, what should be a peek behind the curtain becomes an inch-thin picture show. After claiming several times that she hadn't read any reviews, Julia breaks down to Tom and tells him that she had on opening night. Everything I've done has turned out so wrong," she says, crying and terrified.

John Gara. Debra Messing. All images courtesy of NBC unless specified otherwise. Andrew H.