Marc Shaiman & Scott Wittman Interview: Rogers The Musical
When the first trailer for Hawkeye was released, one part had everyone talking: Rogers: The Musical. In the first episode of the Disney+ series, Clint (Jeremy Renner) takes his family to see a Broadway play inspired by the events of the first Avengers film. It's a funny scene that adds a heaviness to the series when it causes Clint to reflect on his fallen friend Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson).
Screen Rant spoke to composer Marc Shaiman and lyricist Scott Wittman about how Rogers: The Musical came together, why Ant-Man is in the Battle of New York, and keeping secrets.
Screen Rant: How was the idea of Rogers: The Musical presented to you in the first place?
Marc Shaiman: Scott and I, around the time that we were working on Mary Poppins Returns, we had already worked on it. We were luckily invited to be part of this Academy Award event where they give out the honorary awards, and Kevin Feige was there. And someone tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Kevin Feige would like to meet you." Kevin Feige would like to meet me? God, If only my nerd Marvel nerd husband, Lou, was here his head would explode.
I went over and met Kevin Feige. And it turns out, he's a film score aficionado and he knew all the movies I scored and knew them very specifically, he was quoting certain moments from my film scores. And so we traded emails, and then every time I went to see a Marvel movie, which I do, because of my husband, Lou, I would be a good husband and go see it. And so I would write to Kevin and say, "Great job!" As if he needed to hear from me.
Two years later, amazingly, the writers and the directors [of Hawkeye] had this idea for Rogers: The Musical, which they came up with almost jokingly, but they mentioned it to Kevin Feige and he said, "Yes, you're definitely doing that." And they were like, "Uh oh, we think we were joking." But Kevin was like, "No, no, it's got to be there and I know just the guys to do it." So it was just phenomenal when we got that call.
How did that grow over time? Because Rhys Thomas was telling me it started out as this throwaway joke, but then it went from a small idea, joke, to full Broadway production with the actors and everything.
Scott Wittman: Well, I think it was part of Clint bringing the kids to New York. They went to see the show, so that became part of that. Then, they said to us, "We want the song to be about the Battle of New York." At that time, it was just the beginning of the pandemic. It was when New York was in really, really terrible shape with no one leaving their houses and people banging on pots and pans for health care workers at night. And so I said to Mark, "I think I have the title for the song. I think it's a good idea, the idea that it’s, 'Please, someone save the city.'" That seemed to make sense. And then, we wrote a verse and a chorus and sent it to them, and they loved the idea. And they said, "Write the song."
Marc Shaiman: We send the verse and chorus. And we're like, "Is this enough?" And they were like, "Oh, we love it, write more." And actually, that verse and chorus first course was only like, New Yorkers beseeching the Avengers to come but [plays part of the song] that rhythm just seemed right. We wrote a verse and a chorus of New Yorkers, and they were like, "We love that, but we've got to bring the Avengers on." So we're like, "Okay, we'll keep writing more."
And it was amazing that, luckily, they loved what we were writing. This wasn't the third song we wrote to try to get them to say, "Yeah, that's the one." They liked it. And like Rhys had said to you, I don't know that they had thought it'd be more than a verse and a chorus. But we kept writing. That's why it's so nice that they released the whole recording because we wrote a four and a half minute opus. They really only needed 30 seconds for the moment. But you know, they figure we're hiring this whole cast and all the scenery, so it was just thrilling. But it certainly turned into something I think bigger than they might have thought, although I think Kevin might have, in his head thought, "Yeah, go for it all."
Scott Wittman: Certainly part of their sly sense of humor, in the movies and in that world.
Marc Shaiman: And we didn't put Ant-Man in the song because we're fools. That was something that came from Marvel saying, "We think it's funny that the creators of this Broadway musical get it wrong just because they like the idea of Ant-Man flying across the stage." So they would put it in there, even though it wasn't true.
When the trailer came out for Hawkeye, people went nuts over just the idea of Rogers: The Musical, not even knowing how much was going to be in there. Did you guys anticipate that kind of response?
Scott Wittman: Well, it was so long from the time we wrote it. And you're not allowed to speak about it. I said I had forgotten it.
Marc Shaiman: We had to hypnotize ourselves because all you want to do is tell everyone, "We wrote an Avengers musical!" So by not talking about it at all, I had truly almost forgotten that it was coming. And then there it was - that trailer. And that was the first time we saw any of the footage. We were as thrilled in our own eyes popping out of our heads. And I have to admit, I went onto YouTube and watched all those reaction videos. It's so crazy that people make reaction videos. But in this case, I was so excited to see how thrilled they were at the mere prospect of it. And it's been that way since the episodes got released, finally.
I have to wonder because the response is so big, would you do a Rogers: The Musical?
Marc Shaiman: Of course! In a second.
Scott Wittman: Are you asking us to?
Yeah, I think Kevin Feige said I could ask you guys.
Marc Shaiman: Can you imagine? You could write many, many musicals. Imagine if it was all in one night, and they just went from planet to planet, go to Asgard and have a Ragnarok section, and have Hela. I would love to get Cate Blanchett - well, no, she can't be. That's the hard thing. There’s the people who are in the movies and then, there are the real people who would have existed in the universe, which is something we had to think about as we were writing the song.
Someone would have to have overheard Captain America saying, "I could do this all day." "Did he really just say that?" And then the rumors would spread. And then it would get to the guys who are writing this musical, they do their research and find out that Iron Man wanted to go to a shawarma restaurant, and they were seen at a shawarma restaurant after the battle. And so we had to only write things that could possibly be actually known.
You said you wrote one song, but have you thought about other songs? Has anything come up?
Marc Shaiman: Well, we better start moving fast because I know a lot of people on TikTok are thinking about other songs and Lord knows what they're thinking about in multi universes, also. So yes, Scott and I better really get going. There could be a million. I can think of a million songs.
Have there been any talks of doing anything extended or in any kind of real capacity?
Scott Wittman: We don't know. But you know, they work in mysterious ways, the Marvel Universe.
As far as the actual production, how did that come together? Adam Pascal was there. I think those were all Broadway actors?
Marc Shaiman: The first call I made was to Adam Pascal, who I did not know at all. My friend, Seth Rudetsky, had written a show that Adam was in. So I got Adam's number from Seth and I just texted him out of the blue. Because, as Scott and I were writing the song, as soon as I got to, "[sings] I can do this all day." I can't hit that note. And with Marvel, I wasn't going to send them a demo with me with my Jewish cry-for-help singing voice.
So I was like, you know who would be phenomenal on this song? Would be Adam Pascal. Then I was like, "Well, I'll just find Adam Pascal's information and ask him." And as Scott mentioned, it was the height of the pandemic, so everyone's just at home. A lot of people, like myself, had gotten microphones to use to try to keep working for things that came up. So, Adam and then Ty Taylor, who's the other main singer, they both said. "Yes." And sang these demo vocals for us, just to sell the song to Marvel. And it not only sold the song, but it sold the two of them as taking part in the numbers. So they're actually, physically in the number.
Everyone else are local hires out of Atlanta. Because of COVID, they couldn't bring in a whole bunch of Broadway people from New York. Air travel at that time, just couldn't risk it. There are a lot of other phenomenal voices coming out of the bodies of the people in Atlanta, who did phenomenally. But, we had such a good time at the recording session, recording this and then, the fact that we had to keep it secret was so hard. I'm not really keeping secrets.
New episodes of Hawkeye stream Wednesdays on Disney+.