EGOT winner Jennifer Hudson has joined the producing team for the Broadway-bound musical Smash, adapted from the theatrical TV series. The show is expected to open on Broadway in spring 2025. Hudson shared the news March 21 on her daytime talk show The Jennifer Hudson Show.
This will be Hudson's second time producing a musical on Broadway, following 2022 Best Musical winner A Strange Loop—that Tony Award secured Hudson's EGOT status. She made her Broadway debut as a performer in the 2015 revival of The Color Purple as Shug Avery.
The upcoming production is a reunion for Hudson in several ways. The production will see her collaborating with songwriters Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman after starring as Motormouth Maybelle in the 2016 live TV production of Shaiman and Wittman's Hairspray. Hudson also guest starred on the second season of Smash, playing Broadway actor Veronica Moore.
Watch Hudson announce the news on The Jennifer Hudson Show below:
As reported in 2022, the theatre-centric series' long journey to the stage has shifted from a fully realized production of the series' fictional Marilyn Monroe bio-musical Bombshell (which did play a one-night-only benefit concert in 2015) to a musical adaptation of the NBC series. Many of the TV show's songs join new tunes by Shaiman and Wittman. It's unclear if "Let's Be Bad," written for Smash but recently interpolated into the Broadway score of the Some Like It Hot musical, will be included—though the duo left room for that possibility speaking to Playbill about it in 2022.
The plot of the upcoming musical reportedly differs from the TV series, though it will still track the development of a fictional Marilyn Monroe bio-musical. The book is being written by Bob Martin (The Prom) and Rick Elice (Jersey Boys), with Susan Stroman directing. Joshua Bergasse will choreograph after winning an Emmy for his work on the original series.
The show, which aired on NBC for two seasons beginning in 2012, followed writers Julia and Tom, loosely modeled on Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, creating a fictitious musical about screen icon Marilyn Monroe, with the first season following the fight for the lead between newcomer Karen Cartwright and seasoned chorus girl Ivy Lynn.
Smash is being produced by Robert Greenblatt, Neil Meron, and Steven Spielberg, all of whom worked on the Theresa Rebeck-created series, as well.
Visit SmashBroadway.com.
