Is there going be a musical episode of “only Murders in the Building” in Season 3?!
While it hasn’t been officially confirmed that Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez will be singing and dancing at some point, I recently got a tease from musical impresarios Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman. “We’ve worked on the next season of ‘only Murders in the Building,’” Shaiman said. “We’re not allowed to say anything more than that, but you could probably do that math.”
The third season also includes appearances by Meryl Streep, Paul Rudd and Jesse Williams.
Shaiman and Wittman’s latest Broadway extravaganza, a musical adaptation of “Some Like It Hot,” earned the most Tony nominations this year with 13 nods, including best musical and J. Harrison Ghee for leading actor in a musical. The show, with music by Shaiman, lyrics by Shaiman and Wittman and a book by Matthew López and Amber Ruffin, recently had its best week in ticket sales, breaking $1 million at the box office.
“We love the movie,” Shaiman said of the original 1959 Billy Wilder-directed film starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon. “There are some people who, even working on the show, who don’t love the movie as much as Scott and I do,” Shaiman said. “It’s just one of the greatest movies ever. But we were happy to be able to take it to a point that we think Billy Wilder would’ve done if he was working on it.”
Wittman added, “Steven Spielberg came a few months ago to see the show and he was very close to Billy Wilder. I said, ‘Do you think he would have liked it?’ Steven said, ‘He would have loved it.’ I thought that was a good endorsement.”
Not only is Mariah Carey a producer on the show, but Shaiman said he and the Grammy winner bonded over their love of “Bullets Over Broadway.” “She can recite that entire movie verbatim, and she’s really funny,” he said. “She can play all the parts.”
Carey made a surprise appearance during a “Some Like It Hot” curtain call in February. “She was like, ‘I saw the lighting in that one scene and I thought, ‘I hope they have lighting like that,’” Shaiman said. “She was all about the lighting. She’s so brilliant. She’s exactly what you would expect and want Mariah Carey to be like in real life. I find her to be a total joy to be around.”
And then he added, “Don’t we want to Mariah Carey to win a Tony?”
Shaiman and Wittman are currently still developing “Smash,” the musical inspired by the NBC series of the same name. “We had a lovely meeting about casting yesterday,” Wittman said. “Susan Stroman is directing it and we have a schedule. We have two workshops and then it will open spring of 2025.”
Shaiman also exclusively tells me that he is scoring Rob Reiner’s upcoming documentary feature about Albert Brooks. “I’ve been working on this thing longer than any movie score I’ve ever written,” Shaiman said, laughing. “Because it’s not just Rob, it’s Albert Brooks. He’s not dead, but it’s his epitaph. He is analyzing every second of everything I write. But it really is amazing all that’s done. From television and record and then the movies, it’s just amazing.”
