How Cinco Paul Took ‘Schmigadoon!’ to Broadway — More Than Two Decades Later Than Planned

Musicals often take many-years-long, meandering paths to Broadway. But even by those measures, the way Schmigadoon! got there is singular. 

Composer and book writer Cinco Paul first had the idea for a musical that would poke fun at the beloved shows of Broadway’s Golden Age — think Oklahoma!, Carousel, The Sound of Music — more than 20 years ago. Then he took a little detour into big screen animation that happened to include the Despicable Me franchise, Horton Hears a Who, The Lorax and The Secret Life of Pets (all co-written with his collaborator Ken Daurio).

But just as the COVID-19 pandemic shut down Broadway itself, Paul’s longtime dream came true, albeit not quite in the way he’d first imagined: Schmigadoon! became an Apple TV+ show. It told the story of two doctors (played by Cecily Strong and Keegan-Michael Key) — one a musical lover, one an avowed hater — who wander into a magical land where life is a musical, complete with frequent song and dance numbers performed by a who’s-who of Broadway regulars including Aaron Tveit, Kristin Chenoweth, Alan Cumming and Ariana DeBose. 

“I half-jokingly refer to Apple TV+ as our out-of-town tryout,” Paul tells Billboard today. The show got two seasons (the second advanced its focus to musicals of the ’70s and ’80s and accordingly took place in “Schmicago”) before being cancelled in early 2024, despite a third season being already completely written. But a couple of years later, the latest episode in the continuing life of Schmigadoon! has arrived. It’s finally on Broadway — and now tied with The Lost Boys for the most Tony nominations this year (twelve), including best musical and, for Paul, best book of a musical and best original score. 

“The dream and the hope is that we’re going to be able to do a cast recording,” says Paul. “There’s so much new music and so much that’s changed.” He spoke to Billboard ahead of the Tonys about finally getting a show meant for the theater to the theater itself, and what might come next.

You always intended Schmigadoon! for the stage. But having realized it for television first, how do the constraints of each medium compare?   

I went back to the scripts written even before anybody was cast in the TV show — except for Cecily [Strong], she was always attached — and I realized, “Oh, there’s way too much intercutting back and forth.” You cannot do that on stage — way too many locations. So a lot of it was finding creative ways to limit the amount of scenes and expand those scenes and have some scenes that take three or four story beats that were separate and combine them all into one scene.

And then you just discover that the pacing is different on stage — the dramatic requirements and narrative requirements are different in two acts than for six episodes of TV that are leading to a cliffhanger at the end of 25 minutes. And it was an opportunity for me to fix some of the things that I thought maybe we didn’t get this quite right in the TV show. Like “this was a missed opportunity,” or “I wish we’d had a song there and we didn’t have one.” Well, guess what? Now we can do it.

There are also big differences in how easily you can communicate humor on a screen with close ups, where dialogue is a little easier to understand, whereas on stage there’s necessarily more distance. But at least the night I saw it, it seemed like the audience was laughing at all the right moments…

One of the most joyful parts of this whole process has been getting to hear the laughs, because I never got to hear them when it was a TV show. My rule of thumb was like, if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it. If I think this joke would play on the stage, then I’m going to keep it. But if it is something that really works best because of what you’re saying, the ability to focus the viewer’s attention in one spot — or, you know, a facial expression or a close up, well, we’ve got to replace that with something else.  

The show essentially covers season one of Schmigadoon!. Was that always the plan? 

Some people said, “Why don’t you do Act One, season one, and then Act Two, season two?” And it’s like, have you seen these seasons? [Laughs.] There’s a lot going on and certainly this is the best one to start with. As much as I love season two, season one is a great intro for people who have never seen the show. And look, 95% of the population hasn’t seen Schmigadoon!, so for them, it’s just a brand-new musical about two modern people stuck in an old-fashioned musical. 

With the exception of beloved Broadway veteran Ann Harada, the cast is entirely different from that of the show. Was that always the plan? 

For me, the goal really early on was to test the strength of the material to stand on its own. I felt really strongly that we’re not adapting the TV show here, we’re adapting the scripts. So for me it was important to have new people in these roles, except for, of course, the wonderful Ann Harada, who’s back, thank heavens. I love her so much. But other than that, it is nice to have all new voices and faces.

Has anyone’s take on a character surprised you in ways you maybe hadn’t originally thought of it? 

I think certainly the biggest departure from the performance in the TV show would be McKenzie Kurtz as Betsy. It’s very different from Dove [Cameron]’s take and it’s so brilliantly and surprisingly comedic in a  very unhinged, aggressively funny way. That’s one that I have to highlight, because she’s just insane. 

The show’s advertisements say “Finally, a musical for people who roll their eyes at musicals!” But I’d say it’s more for people who love musicals so much that they’ve earned the right to roll their eyes at some aspects of them. There’s a balance of satire with clear love for the form — a little like how The Book of Mormon made me feel.  

From the first day of the writers’ room, I said “This all has to come from a place of love.” I always thought, this is a comedy about being in a musical that then becomes a musical itself, so hopefully, everybody’s laugh, laugh, laughing, and then suddenly they’re feeling things because of the power of musical theater.  

I love that you mentioned Book of Mormon, because in some ways, that was the aim. Book of Mormon is brilliant satirical pastiche of musical theater and that’s exactly what we were aiming for with this. I mean, they were harder-hitting, they pushed the envelope in a way that’s not my style, but I still admire the intelligence behind what they were doing, and that’s what we were shooting for, too. 

I know you’re a big pop music guy too. Are there pop artists you wish would have written a musical, or could still?  

Some of my favorites have tried their hand at it, like Randy Newman did Faust and Elvis Costello did A Face In the Crowd. But like, where’s the Ben Folds musical, where’s the Regina Spektor musical? A lot of my favorite people, I think there’s a musical theater-esque quality to some of their music that [would make them] naturals at it. Billy Joel’s a good one too.   

Considering your animation background, would you ever want to score a Disney musical film? 

I mean, that would be a dream. I sort of walked away from animation… for 12 years it was an amazing experience, everything we wrote got made, but I really wanted to try something new and live action, and that’s what led to Schmigadoon!. But I’ve always said to my agent [that] I would return to animation if I got to write the songs — that would be the carrot that would bring me back. 

You’ve had other musicals in the works — where do those projects stand? 

The next thing I’m hoping to get going is a musical that we’re now calling Sweet Jesus, which [used to be] called A.D.16, which I wrote with Bekah Brunstetter about teenage Mary Magdalene getting a crush on teenage Jesus. The score is all ’80s/’90s R&B, and it’s something I’m really proud of. So we’re aiming towards a new workshop in the fall that hopefully will lead to a production. That’s the next big looming thing. Working with everybody on Schmigadoon! has been wonderful, and I love the community, everybody’s been so kind and supportive, and it’s just been really fun. So I want more of it.