Ah, Marilyn!
“There was something about her — how much she wanted to love and be loved,’’ says Debra Messing, who plays the lyricist, getting all dreamy-eyed as she imagines the project’s possibilities.
Her early vision of Marilyn is soon turned into a number called “Let Me Be Your Star’’ (“To do what she can/ For the love of one man/ And for millions who love from afar’’), with both would-be Marilyns performing it in an explosive finale to the first episode.
But “Smash’’ is no more single-minded about charting a Broadway show’s long journey from raw concept to opening night than “The West Wing’’ was about obsessing over how a bill wends its way from Congress to the president’s desk.
“Their day job happens to be putting together a show, but their lives aren’t really about that,’’ says Craig Zadan, who, with partner Neil Meron, is among the many “Smash’’ executive producers. “We also have adoption, divorce, infidelity and disapproving parents from the Midwest in our story lines. We’ve put in as many human, universal qualities as we can: It’s a story about wish fulfillment.’’
Rest assured, no one solves a crime or diagnoses a disease. Even so, Meron suggests that “Smash’’ could still be called a procedural.
“The goal would be to have a Broadway show created every season, and have our characters involved with creating each of them,’’ he says.
What “Smash’’ won’t be, he quickly adds, is a sort of “Glee’’-for-adults, as some viewers may have assumed.
“We don’t think that it’s anything like `Glee,’’’ Meron declares. “But we thank God for `Glee,’ because it got viewers used to watching people sing on TV dramas.’’
One big difference: While “Glee’’ does covers of popular songs, “Smash’’ will introduce and compile original songs (splendidly conceived by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman of “Hairspray’’) for the “Marilyn the Musical’’ show-within-a-show. Then, possibly, that pretend musical might be mounted for real.
