Broadway Legends Talk Writing For Steve Martin On Only Murders In The Building (2024)

Only Murders in the Building season 3 has brought fun musical flair to the true crime comedy, with a number of standout pieces like “Look for the Light” that would sound at home in any real-world Broadway show. The song with the biggest story impact, however, is “Which of the Pickwick Triplets Did It?”, the tongue-twisting patter song Charles-Hayden Savage (Steve Martin) is set to perform in the in-show musical Death Rattle. The piece keeps sending Savage to “the White Room”, which begins to strain his relationship with Oliver Putnam (Martin Short).

With a musical at the heart of Only Murders in the Building season 3, the songs had to hold up to Broadway standards. That’s why Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, the award-winning writers behind Dear Evan Hansen and The Greatest Showman, were hired to write or co-write nearly every song the season, including “Which of the Pickwick Triplets Did It?” For that song, however, they enlisted two more Broadway legends in Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, who wrote Hairspray. Pasek, Paul, Shaiman, and Wittman even wrote songs for the beloved NBC series Smash.

Benj Pasek, Justin Paul, Marc Shaiman, and Scott Wittman dove deep into the making of “Which of the Pickwick Triplets Did It?” in a fun conversation with Screen Rant. Note: This interview was conducted during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, and the show covered here would not exist without the labor of the writers and actors in both unions. This interview has also been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Benj Pasek, Justin Paul, Marc Shaiman & Scott Wittman On Only Murders In The Building

Screen Rant: I realized you all have worked on the same project in Smash, which I used to watch week to week and was crazy about, but had you ever [actually] collaborated other than just being involved in the same general thing?

Scott Wittman: No, we didn’t even meet them on Smash. We were all in separate worlds.

Benj Pasek: But I do know that they were the nice people who allowed us to get the job on Smash, and that was our first TV job ever. I don't know if I've ever said this to you guys, but I hear that you guys were listening and that you approved our song, or whatever. So, they're the reasons why we got our first television show.

Justin Paul: We had to jump through their hoops to be able to be approved.

Scott Wittman: We did recommend them. I remember saying, “You should get these young whippersnappers.”

Benj Pasek: Justin and I have loved Marc and Scott forever. We’ve just been fans, and Smash was a huge, huge opportunity for us. It was the first time, honestly, we ever had a song on television, so it was huge for us. But we have just been fans for a really long time and have always wanted to play in the same sandbox, and never thought that we would ever get the opportunity to do so. And then this became an amazing opportunity to do so.

Does that mean that, Justin and Benj, that you got them involved in Only Murders?

Justin Paul: The way that it came about was all this crazy lovely serendipity, which was [that] we went to college with a lovely woman named Sas Goldberg and she and Benj were together--it happened to be at the same place--on vacation. They were just having a conversation and she was like, “When I get back, I'm going back into the writers’ room. I'm joining, this season, the writers’ room for Only Murders in the Building.” He was like, “Oh my gosh, we're huge fans of that show.” And, saying it in Benj’s typical way of just trying to create a path where there isn't one, he was like, “If there's ever a song, if you need a ditty or something…”

Benj Pasek: I was hawking our wares.

Justin Paul: And there was no music in the show, necessarily. There was no plot of any of this, but it was like, "If you ever need something, we will do it. We love this show. We live on the Upper West Side." He was just hawking our credentials of why we should be part of Only Murders in the Building.

Benj Pasek: Then she called back literally a week later and she's like, "So, not only do they might want a song, but the entire plot around the season hinges upon a fictional musical. I brought up that you guys might be interested in working on it, and they were like, 'Great!’” So, it was very serendipitous in that way. We knew that there were going to be a couple of song moments, and we honestly just used the moment [for] getting to work with some of our favorite folks. [We asked Marc and Scott] knowing the beautiful reciprocity of the gift that they gave us on Smash, but also, we have always wanted to work with Marc and Scott on something. We're such huge fans; this seemed like such a fun opportunity to get to collaborate.

Justin Paul: We sort of knew this was a great chance to work with some of our favorite writers and our favorite musical theater idols because we can go to them and say, "Hey, do you want to work with us writing a song for Steve Martin?" or, "Do you want to come along and write a song with us for Meryl Streep?" So, there was that built in. This is a fun show, [and there’s] a great spirit of collaboration on the show itself. It's all about Broadway. They're getting the best people on Broadway; half of them are already on the show, but it's going to be a whole thing about Broadway. There was going to be an episode about a sitzprobe and about curtain coming down.

It's so crazy to us that there’s a TV show on now with these guys and Selena Gomez that's centering all around Broadway this season, and so we were like, "Why don't we continue that spirit? Let's bring along some of our favorite friends." These gentlemen kindly said yes to us, even though they were highly skeptical of what the heck that was going to look like. Maybe skeptical of us, I don't know, but they kindly said, "Yes, let's get in a room and see what the heck happens."

Marc Shaiman: As you can tell from Justin's last speech, the idea of getting a word in edgewise just seemed like... “How will we write together?” But the truth is, we got together and the four of us started writing lyrics in the most fantastic way--the same way Scott and I do it, and obviously the same way that Justin and Benj do it. We were just the four of us throwing out stuff. Usually, I'm very good at remembering. "I wrote that. I wrote that," on things, which is obnoxious. I do remember those things, but in this case, I can look at the lyric and go, "I think, but I'm not sure." We were all just going at it equally, and it was just fantastic.

Scott Wittman: Because we had never written with anyone else--except for Bette Midler a few times where we wrote songs with her--I really felt like getting in a room was like taking all our clothes off together. So, we did that, and it worked out well.

Logistically, how did you start the song? Was it just lyrics and rhythm stuff? I imagine you don't necessarily need a piano to get started on this kind of thing.

Scott Wittman: Well, everything starts with a story, so we worked from the script and an outline of what the character was, and what the plot of the mystery was. So, we started with Pickwicks and that has a lot of alliteration; that was the beginning of it, I think.

Benj Pasek: We worked really collaboratively with John Hoffman (Only Murders in the Building co-creator) who was really trying to hone in on, “What is the idea, specifically, of this patter song?” Even the fact that it was going to be a patter song and that the plot hinged around having a really tough song to be able to sing was then a fun challenge for us of, “How do we then reverse-engineer something that would feel like a challenge to be able to perform?” And then, as Scott is saying, “How do we make that incredibly alliterative,” or “How do we allow it to be complex and tongue twisty and all of that?” And that began to inform our process.

Then, honestly, the four of us were just in a room starting with lyric first. The first line that we wrote was, "Which of the Pickwick triplets did it?" And then it's like, "Okay. What rhymes with ‘did it’?" It’s like having a flashlight and you can only see a little bit in front of you, and things get revealed, and everyone just is piping up and contributing different ideas, and slowly but surely we got a little bit further down the path together.

So much was made of Steve Martin's character not being able to do this throughout the season. How was it when he actually got the song? Is it as much of a challenge as it's made out to be?

Scott Wittman: A challenge to sing? Yes. I think he really loved the song and I think he was very happy when he was done with it; a combination of the two. But he worked extremely hard. I mean, it was hard. It was a lot of pre-records and singing live, and he had to wrap his tongue around all those vowels. So yes.

I was going to ask if the vocals were recorded live [for the one that was in the show], or if that was pre-record. Or was it a mix?

Justin Paul: It's a little bit of a mix. Well, what ended up in the TV broadcast is a little bit of a mix. Typically, you're going to go in with a pre-record; that is the plan. What’s actually amazing is that number… I can't remember what caused the delay, but some days got pushed and stuff, and so they ended up having like two or three hours to shoot that number in what was supposed to be a whole day shoot, or something like that. Of course, of all the numbers that get squeezed like that, it's like, “Really? This one?” So it’s that much more impressive when you watch Steve execute it, knowing that he was literally under the gun.

Scott Wittman: It was adorable, too, because Marty had wrapped, and Meryl had wrapped, and they all stayed to watch Steve do it. It was really sweet. It’s a lovely group up there. They really enjoy each other.

Even watching the show, it seems like that's kind of the energy, which is great.

Scott Wittman: And in my whole life in show business, this is one of the only things we wrote that there were no notes from anyone.

Marc Shaiman: That's true. I don't know if you've seen the video; the guys have posted some of it. We made a video of just us reciting the lyrics, with Justin and I just playing a little bit, and they just kind of went, "Yeah, that's it."

Justin Paul: Well, we worked hard on it guys. I think that was hopefully due to the good work that we all did together and also really careful plotting from John in the writer's room. They knew how they wanted to use the song. We had so much direction. I think another thing about the writing process that was so fun for us was [that] I feel like a lot of what we did was reverse engineering, so just sitting around thinking "What are the most delicious pairings of murder and infanthood? And what are fun rhymes of an investigation and babies? How can we pair these things up?” It was really, in the best way, the one-upmanship of, like, "What about this?” “Oh no, we can add one more rhyme in there.” Then, once we had all those assembled, "Okay, this is our arsenal here. How do we put these to use in creating a song?”

And there were some things where we were like, "This is so good, but we can't squeeze it in." But a lot of it was really loving. A patter song… this is sort of a puzzle anyway, so it was really [about] identifying some of our favorite pieces and then putting them together. It was like, "How zany can we be? How far can we go?" In video that Marc is talking about, if you listen closely, you'll hear us say, "Will the baby get fried for matricide?" We did get one note, and the note was, "I don't think we want to put on the broadcast the image of an infant and an electric chair, so we're going to say, ‘Will the baby get tried’," Which was equally fitting and makes sense to a courtroom and a case and a murder. They didn't want to evoke electrifying a young toddler.

Props for getting the word “triptych” in a song, too.

Marc Shaiman: I know. We were all thrilled. We literally were dancing with joy that we figured that one out.

Was there anything you used as a reference in terms of great patter songs that you wanted to keep in mind as you were writing?

Benj Pasek: I'm sure lingering all of our heads is “Modern Major General” in some way. I don't know that you can ever escape it, just because it looms large in the pantheon of great patter songs.

Scott Wittman: I'd say Gilbert and Sullivan.

Benj Pasek: Gilbert and Sullivan or some Lerner and Loewe stuff. I don't know; I think we didn't reference anything directly. I think we all love classic Broadway show tunes as well, so just having a really similar pool of references to draw, even if we didn’t name them… We sort of all identified the same kind of style that we thought it should be in.

Marc Shaiman: And Scott and I were often told, "That song is too wordy." We do like writing wordy songs. Sometimes, on some shows, we've even been told, "It's so wordy that the audience will tune out." In this case, it was nice to be encouraged to embrace it.

Benj Pasek: And the moment that was engineered was really about paying attention to the lyric. What was so great about how John and the writers set up the song was that the audience is really invested in, “Can he say these lyrics?” So, it's not something where you're distracted by other stage pictures that are going on, or other things that are happening that are going to detract. It allowed us to put as much dexterity and complicated internal rhyme as possible because the audience's only job, really, is to follow whether or not Charles-Hayden Savage can actually nail the patter song. It really allowed us to maximize that element of it.

Scott Wittman: It created an earworm long before they actually heard it, so that's sort of fun too. I think that the audience enjoyed that.

Marc Shaiman: And then there’s Steve's performance. I was there that day and had to leave because they kept pushing it back. I couldn't believe I had sat there all day [only to have to leave], but that's typical on a movie or TV. So, I only saw him for the first time in that full version that they put out online. He's just so adorable. It was just a thrill.

Justin Paul: I wasn't able to be there either. I remember texting with some of the music team, and they were like, "I don't know what we're going to do, because we're only going to have maybe two hours to get this whole thing." Of all the songs in the season, it was intentionally the most challenging of all of the songs [and] of all the moments, and so we were like, "How are we going to shortchange this?" But it wasn't shortchanged.

At least [for] the folks on the music team, no one had ever seen him perform it. No one had seen him do what he was going to do, so everything that he broke out, all these crazy hand motions and his entire iteration of that song and that performance… I don't think anyone had ever seen before. That's just what he did on the day when cameras were rolling. It is… I say this about the performance, not the song: his performance is iconic. It really is.

Scott Wittman: I was there. He attacked it straight on. It was all in one take too, most of it.

I love the way that it's presented in the show. It’s played in full and then there are these shots of everyone else trying to solve the murder as [the song is] happening. Did you know that it was going to be presented in that way, and from start to finish? Because I feel like that is rare even in shows that feature musicals; usually there are cut points and things like that.

Scott Wittman: It’s hard to cut away from that song though, because you'd lose the engine. It would stall on the track.

Marc Shaiman: It was just pleasing to see, "Oh my god, it's all in there." Because yeah, we are used to [projects where] eventually something gets cut or lost. It was also great that they did it as it is on the episode with all the other things going on. Nowadays it's so great that they can also present just him, so that there are these two versions to take in. It's very satisfying.

Scott Wittman: On Smash, we used to learn that if we kept changing keys, they couldn't cut.

It doesn't necessarily sound like it, but Steve Martin is such an accomplished musician as well. Did he have any input or suggestions with this at all?

Marc Shaiman: No. He never said anything like, "Could that be a C# minor instead of this?" or anything like that. I think he felt it was enough to just learn the song and be able to perform it. And then we had the evil Ian co-producing the vocal. I never saw anything like Ian--never. I thought I’m something when I'm working with a singer, [like], “Try it again. Try it this way,” knowing that you can comp a vocal and take the best of this and that, but I never saw anything like this. But Steve Martin was incredibly patient and would just try anything any of us suggested. He was like, "No, no, no. Give me a line reading. Sing it to me the way you think." And he would just try it, like, eight different ways. It was phenomenal. He's Steve Martin.

Who orchestrated this? Because the orchestration is beautiful.

Justin Paul: The orchestrator was an incredibly talented fellow named August Eriksmoen, who we've worked with before. What's great about August is that his style diversity is really off the chart. Even in our own work, he's done some more contemporary stuff and he's done a lot of classic Broadway kind of stuff, so his abilities really run the gamut. The first time that I saw this chart, I was like, "Okay, this is going to be [great.]"

He was like, "Can I go there?" and we're like, "Yes, you have to go there." We’re so grateful that the show, the network, the studio, [and] everybody really committed to, “We want to make this feel like a big Broadway musical.” You watch on screen and [there’s] that set that they built at United Palace, [we had] an orchestra that was a really nice-sized orchestra record, and got the proper time to do it. It was onscreen an ode to Broadway, and a love letter to Broadway, but offscreen it was as well, from getting Broadway songwriters, to orchestrator, to the orchestra, to doing it the right way. It felt really beautiful that there was such a love and respect for how things get done on Broadway.

About Only Murders In The Building Season 3

Season three of “Only Murders in the Building” finds Charles, Oliver & Mabel (played by Steve Martin, Martin Short & Selena Gomez) investigating a murder behind the scenes of a Broadway show. Ben Glenroy (Paul Rudd) is a Hollywood action star whose Broadway debut is cut short by his untimely death. Aided by co-star Loretta Durkin (Meryl Streep), our trio embarks on their toughest case yet, all while director Oliver desperately attempts to put his show back together. Curtains up!

Check out our other interview with co-creator John Hoffman as well.

Only Murders in the Building season 3 is on Hulu now.

Source: Screen Rant Plus

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