Movies News
‘Smash’ series finale: Megan Hilty doesn’t want ‘a lot of hate mail’
Hilty says she had fair warning about Ivy’s surprising doctor’s phone call, regarding the baby whose likely father is randy theater director Derek Wills (Jack Davenport), before she had to play that “Smash” moment. “Before I saw it in the script, [executive producer] Josh Safran called me and was like, ‘OK, this is what we have planned. Are you OK with it?’
“Immediately, I thought, ‘Hmm. Interesting. How are we going to deal with it?’ It’s a very delicate subject, and I didn’t want to send the wrong message. And I certainly don’t want to get a lot of hate mail. I think that how we’ve ultimately dealt with it is the ideal situation.”
RELATED: Best & Worst of the 2013 TV Season Finales
The on-set atmosphere during filming of what became the “Smash” swan song was “actually very upbeat,” reports Hilty, who also released her first solo album (“It Happens All the Time”) recently. “We all enjoy each other very much, and it was like it was at the end of last season: ‘We really don’t know what’s going to happen, but we’ve sure had fun.’ And we were determined to have fun until the very last minute.”
Much of Hilty’s acceptance of the “Smash” cancellation, she allows, is that it’s nothing new to her. “That’s theater life,” she reasons. “You do these shows and you become very close with people. You develop these relationships, then all of a sudden, the show is over and everybody’s gone. I’m used to it. I have a lot of ‘summer camp’ friends.”
Having played good witch Glinda in “Wicked” and the Dolly Parton role in “9 to 5: The Musical,” Hilty confirms she’s “been talking about a couple of things” in terms of returning to Broadway — with a reading of Cole Porter‘s “Can-Can” in her immediate future — but as for rumors that “Bombshell” might survive “Smash” as an actual stage show, she dispels them.
“Originally,” she says, “in the first inception of the show when it was [being developed] at Showtime, the idea was possibly to have a different musical at the end of every season that actually would go to Broadway. I think that was before people understood it takes years and years to get a show to Broadway. It just doesn’t work like that.
“Right now, we have a bunch of amazing songs … and no book [for ‘Bombshell’]. And I would love to meet the woman who could actually sing all those songs in a row, let alone eight times a week! They’re all epic showstoppers. I’d love to see somebody do something with it, but as far as I know, nothing’s happening.”
Photo/Video credit: NBC