Line #2 Trivia/Smash


1	* ActorAllusion:
2	** Creator/NickJonas guest stars as Lyle West, an actor who started out on Broadway. Nick himself got his start in ''Theatre/LesMiserables''.
3	** Played with in the case of Grace Gummer, who plays Eileen's daughter Katie -a humanitarian who spends most of her time helping out in remote, foreign locations. Her older sister Mamie Gummer stared in a show with a similar premise of helping out in remote locations, only as a doctor.
4	** Creator/DebraMessing playing a woman living in [[BigApplesauce New York]] [[Series/WillAndGrace whose best friend is a gay man]]
5	** Creator/LeighConroy is basically a flanderized Bernadette Peters.
6	** [[Creator/KatharineMcPhee Karen]] [[Series/AmericanIdol auditioning for a show]] involving a mean Brit.
7	** Ivy's previous theatre experience included some time spent in ''Theatre/{{Wicked}}''. Megan Hilty played Glinda on Broadway.
8	** Tom mentions staying up all night in the hopes of snagging ''Theatre/{{RENT}}'' tickets. Will Chase, portraying the role of Michael Swift, was the Roger understudy in ''RENT'' and appeared as Roger in ''RENT'''s last production.
9	* CaliforniaDoubling: Mostly averted as the series is both set and filmed in New York (and [[SceneryPorn boy, do they make sure we know it]]). But on the occasions when the story leaves New York, the film crew doesn't.
10	** Karen's home state of Iowa (as seen in "Enter Mr. [=DiMaggio=]") is played by the Big Apple suburb of Nyack.
11	** The Boston scenes in the last few episodes of season 1 were filmed in Staten Island.
12	* TheCastShowoff: Justified because the show is about musicals. However, in "Enter Mr. [=DiMaggio=]" Creator/KatharineMcPhee seems to sing at the karaoke place just because.
13	** Pretty much the entire reason Creator/NickJonas sings when he guest stars in "The Cost Of Art". No real reason is given for him to be playing and singing, but hey, it's Nick Jonas, so why not?
14	* {{Defictionalization}}:
15	** The cabaret club 54 Below staged ''Hit List'' for several shows, featuring Andy Mientus, Jeremy Jordan, and Krysta Rodriguez reprising the roles they had in the show.
16	** ''Bombshell'' was also staged as a one-night only benefit concert in 2015 with some of the original cast members, including Hilty as Marilyn. This was streamed in 2020 to benefit the Actor's Fund. [[note]] While there was talk of an official Broadway production in 2015, producer Craig Zadan's death in 2018 has left it in DevelopmentHell.[[/note]]
17	* RomanceOnTheSet: Though her role ended up on the cutting room floor, this show introduced New York City Ballet principal Sara Mearns to her now-husband, legendary Broadway choreographer Joshua Bergasse.
18	* TroubledProduction: ''Buzzfeed'' ran [[http://www.buzzfeed.com/kateaurthur/how-smash-became-tvs-biggest-train-wreck a long article]] shortly before the Season 2 premiere about how Season 1 was a, uh, ''smash'' in an entirely different sense of the word, requiring a major [[ReTool retooling]]:
19	** The concept seemed great at first. Playwright and screenwriter Theresa Rebeck, who'd been a co-producer of ''Series/NYPDBlue'', had long tried to sell the idea of a TV series built around putting on a Broadway show. No one was interested until Robert Greenblatt, who's apparently also a theater geek, took over at NBC. The network's lagging ratings and need for something different made it likely her show would be picked up. Then he got Steven Spielberg interested. The $7.5 million pilot episode wowed audiences at the 2011 upfronts and was set to premiere in midseason.
20	** Then things went to hell. Since she'd never run a TV show before, the network and the studio brought in Creator/DavidMarshallGrant, who had the relevant experience, to be her assistant showrunner. She reportedly resented the idea she needed help, and immediately got paranoid, believing Grant was being set up to replace her eventually. Soon she was fighting regularly with not only him but the executives at the network ''and'' the studio.
21	** Rebeck insisted on writing the next two episodes by herself. She also eschewed having a writers' room, preferring to work with the writers individually and then rewrite to her pleasure, a process that's worked on other shows. However, during that time, she and the other executives became preoccupied with fending off [[ExecutiveMeddling Spielberg's move to replace Megan Hilty]].
22	** They kept her, one of the few things that kept the show's quality up, but meanwhile the writing went off in weird directions. A subplot involving Julia's attempt to adopt a sister for her teenage son, Leo, began taking up a great deal of the show. It was kept in because [[RealitySubtext it mirrored a similar event in Rebeck's own life]], and even the network executives knew how personal it was to her and said nothing. Ellis, villainous assistant to Karen's writing partner Tom, [[BreakoutCharacter somehow became a major character]] (because Spielberg loved him), as did Leo (whose actor, Emory Cohen, also survived an attempt to recast him). Since there was no writers' room, and the writers thus didn't know what each other was doing, important character moments wound up being redone in episode after episode, making the show campy and unintentionally funny
23	** By the time the third episode was done it was obvious that the show was going the wrong way in a big hurry. Yet Rebeck wouldn't listen to ''anyone'' and refused to make any changes, no matter how long and loud they fought with her. Yet the executives, particularly Greenblatt, continued to involve themselves in even minor aspects of production, like the fabric for the Marilyn Monroe costume. His suggestions were actually, according to the writers and crew, useful, to the point that they were hoping Rebeck gave in. "You know it's bad when ''our last hope was the network''," said one.

Context Trivia / Smash