For "Smash" Season 2, the NBC drama is expanding its songwriters. Among the new names joining Season 1's Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman is Andrew McMahon of Jack's Mannequin fame.
New "Smash" showrunner and executive producer Josh Safran revealed some of the names attached to Season 2 to Playbill.com and said McMahon the "wildcard of the bunch."
"Joe Iconis, Drew Gasparini, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, and sort of the wildcard of the bunch, Andrew McMahon, who has never written musical theatre before but he is a pop artist. His band is called Jack's Mannequin," Safran told Playbill. "Lucie Silvas is also a singer-songwriter whose music we are also using. She's not a musical theatre writer either, and her music came to me through Kat McPhee, who one day was just playing me songs that she thought were great and would be great for Jimmy and Kyle, and they were incredible ..."
The new songwriters will pen the music for the musical that Jimmy (Jeremy Jordan) and Kyle (Andy Mientus), two new Season 2 characters, are writing.
In addition to the casting of Jordan and Mientus, "Smash" Season 2 has added Krysta Rodriguez to the main cast and will see guest appearances from Liza Minnelli, Jennifer Hudson, Jesse L. Martin and Sean Hayes.
Though it was reported that Jaime Cepero (Ellis), Raza Jaffrey (Dev), Brian d'Arcy James (Frank) and Will Chase (Michael Swift) were written out of "Smash" after Season 1, Safran told Playbill that's not to say that they can't return to the series.
"In my mind, the door's always opened," he said. "It is, in that way, a soap opera because it's an ensemble show with a cast of many characters, and you know theatre -- somebody does a show, then they go into a pilot, then they come back to do a show, and suddenly they're back!"
"Smash" Season 2 premieres on Tuesday, Feb. 5 at 9 p.m. EST on NBC.
For more, click over to Playbill.com.
