Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist A Talk Showrunner, Austin Winsberg

Automatically transcribed; may contain errors.

hi austin how are you i'm allison with FlickDirect hi allison so we're going to talk today about zoe's extraordinary playlist i love the show i can gush for hours about it um but being creator and show runner what does that mean exactly what as sure runner are your responsibilities how much weight is put on your shoulders as a pair as compared to others all of it i i i run the writer's room i am in charge of the story breaking and all of the arcs and everything for the season i pick the songs i work on the way the songs sound with our music producer i work with our choreographer to create the musical numbers i'm in charge of casting i'm on set i'm in editing every aspect of the show from soup to nuts if we use that expression uh i am the overseer of all things zoe's so not too much time yeah you know spent on it 17 hours 17 hours a day seven days a week for the last two two and a half years of my life oh my god are you ready for it to be over then you know um zoey's is no i mean as as look this is as challenging as this show is and it is immensely challenging i mean we shoot a new musical every eight days and musicals take eight years to go to broadway and we're doing it in eight days so as immensely challenging as it is and the sacrifices that have to be made i have two young kids and a wife and the show shoots in canada and i was away from the family for a lot of the pandemic shooting the show um as challenging as that is zoe's is like my other baby and i feel very protective of it so i'm not ready to say goodbye to zoe yet so then give me your quick elevator pitch as to why they should um renew it for season three because it's awesome no because because i think zoey's is uniquely different than anything else on television and i think that uh the show is joyful and embodies a lot of ideas about um compassion and the human spirit that i think are very important in the world right now and i think that um the show is creatively uh inventive and continues to top itself while also finding deep emotional moments and connections for the audience and i think it has a very loyal fan base and i could get into statistics we won the usa today save our show poll we want the tv line save our show poll we get nominated for awards we're in the conversation for emmy so i feel like there's a lot of momentum behind the show and a lot of good will behind the show and i feel like for a show to have the kind of that wind on its sails i don't think that's a time to cancel the show no i wholeheartedly agree with everything you have just said that was a great elevator pitch um i was gonna mention the save our show polls that you guys keep winning so does that make a difference to the network um do they look at that do they consider that tell me how that fits in well i don't know what their exact mindset is i don't know i'm not in the rooms behind the closed doors the room where it happens but i i think that i you know i i bombard them with every good thing that comes out and i think they're aware of those things and i think that um anything that shows audience support and connectivity i've got to believe that it's important to them i think we were in a deeply challenging time slot our second half of the season and i think that we have nev we haven't necessarily had um the best lead-ins to help boost us that over time so it but i don't know how they look at it i mean you know i think the way that people watch television is changing significantly and zoe's is on different platforms and streamers and i don't watch anything live anymore so it's hard to know what the criteria is if we're now you're getting me on a whole rant about this if we're only looking at the overnight numbers i don't think that tells the whole story or the whole picture of who's watching zoe's and how yeah i completely agree with you but that's a great segue into my next question of i've heard rumors of possibly going to peacock and getting renewed that way how would that change the dynamics of the show or would it i don't have the answers to that i mean i feel like the the biggest change i would imagine is that we wouldn't be as beholden to the time constraints of network tv so we have again we have 42 and a half minutes to tell the stories each week and inevitably there are scenes and parts of story lines that end up on the cutting room floor just because we don't have the time and every one of them feels like a loss to me when we have to lose it so i would imagine that if we're on a streamer we would have the ability to go a little bit longer maybe i could get a little bit deeper in certain things um i don't know do we do swear words do we stop what the bleep you know i don't know we gotta figure that out but no i would like to think that we would we would preserve the tone of it and the scope of it and just maybe have a little bit more time to a little more breathing room i think would be the main difference i would imagine well i have to say you have to keep that bleep at the beginning because it's like a mad lib you know i don't know exactly you think you know but maybe not but i would love to see mo go off i mean really go off i think that was like a swearing tirade yeah right wouldn't that be phenomenal let me talk to peacock let me see what those standards and practices are all right let's make it happen so with other shows they tend to do a musical episode as a special for zoe as you said every episode is a musical so will we get a non-musical episode well first of all i think they do one musical episode they're like that was insane let's never do that again and we do that and they're like yeah you see what our pain is every single week uh uh we could do a non-musical episode it doesn't excite me i feel like i feel like when we did the flashback episode this season episode 12 before zoe had her powers the challenge for us in that episode was being creative in how do we still put musical numbers in the show when she doesn't have the powers and so i thought that was a create an interesting creative challenge for us to kind of break the rules of the show and try something different to do an episode that is just purely um non-musical i don't know i feel like part of what makes this show special is that we have the ability to do it so i would sort of be sad if we took that away i think i agree with you i think it would change the tone of that episode but at the you know at the end i wanted to be like a dream and just have a grand musical finale number you know what i mean and i'm sure you guys could pull that off immensely okay so we'll do an episode with no musical numbers except the biggest one you've ever seen at the end right exactly and boy that'll be an easy week for you wouldn't it yeah one musical number we'll spend seven days just shooting that one number [Laughter] i love it all right um what's your favorite episode oh i mean they're all my children i know i i you know there's certain ones that stand out to me um each season is just sort of being um anomalies or or where we took bigger creative swings that i think for me felt creatively successful so the first the glitch episode of season one where jane had to sing six songs on her own i mean the the high wire act that she had to pull off that week and what we had to pull off just in doing that episode i'm very very proud of that episode um this the first season finale where the father passed away and it's based on my own dad what really happened in our own life um and the seven minute american pie number you know that's that's an episode that i'm very proud of too um season two episode six the systemic racism episode and everything the deep dive we did with john clarence stort and and alex newell and and kapil talwocker in that episode and really trying to be authentic to their own stories and their own experiences i'm very proud of that episode um you know mandy moore directing episode 11 this season with the beta breakers race her first episode directing ever of tv um so you know i have certain ones i can but i can also pick musical moments here and there but it's all i don't know it's all a blur because it's all part of the thing process it's all it's all part of the creation and the date the endless challenges of doing the show all right let's talk about moving on to hopefully season three we ended season two very interestingly mo's got this whole new dynamic going on uh you know max and and um max and zoe hi uh max and zoe max is now hearing or was that a dream did max not really hear zoey's heart song hmm great question good question do you have an idea of where things are headed do you have an idea in your head of of how you see the whole season and how the story arcs are going to go and does that change from you know throughout the season sure i mean typically what you do when you start a season is the first couple weeks you spend in the room with the writers kind of mapping out the big season arcs and then inevitably oh that thing that we thought was going to be in episode 11 we should actually do it in episode 7 and well the thing that we thought was going to take four episodes really only takes two so inevitably things sort of shift and move around on the board as you're kind of creating i have big notions for season three and larger arcs and stuff like that but excited to get into a room with people and really dig into what those could look like oh i'm very excited about that tell me a little bit about the music how much encyclopedia of music are you in your brain picking all those songs getting the right songs do you do the songs first or do you do write the script and then say oh this song would be perfect right there first of all just because of the nature of the process and the time it takes for everything we always include the songs at the outline stage and so as we're breaking the story in the room we're coming up with the songs and maybe we'll pick two or three in a moment but usually it's like no this is the one we want um and i've sort of uh trained everybody the producers of studio in the network that they have to approve the songs at outline stage which is early because we have to start our process of getting the rights yeah appearances getting harvey mason jr our amazing music producer to start recording demos starting to talk to mandy moore our choreographer producer about how these dances should feel like so the songs are brought in very early in the process and with very little room to change um as far as my own encyclopedic knowledge uh i would say my musical knowledge is like here it's not here here and so i feel like in terms of picking songs most of the time the rule i had for the first couple seasons and i think this could maybe start to shift a little bit is i i needed to have at least some sort of familiarity with the song and i feel like if i have familiarity with the song most of the audience will have familiarity with it because my musical knowledge isn't here because it's like here i think it's grown a little bit over the last few years uh you know the hard part is now when i'm driving in the car anywhere anywhere on the radio anytime i hear a song i think oh that could be this so i can't really listen to music in the same way anymore it's all in the services and i just have a running list of songs that we haven't used in the show that i think good story songs that i just um you know i'm always writing down yeah i was just gonna ask you that do you hear songs now and go oh that would be perfect you know it's all like it's all i do and it's like actually in the last month or two i've tried to not do that because i've been trying to like just take a moment of like not having it to just sort of take a slight break from it but once i get back into zoe story breaking mode it's all i can do and then there will be times where we'll listen to 50 songs more before we pick the right one and we'll just go through song after song after song we'll look at lists of songs we'll look at what's the idea that we want to do here oh this idea is about jealousy so we'll listen to 20 songs that have to do with being jealous before we find the right one so there's a lot that goes into encompassing all of this in terms of finding the the scene and the song yeah and i have rules about the songs too that are kind of musical theater rules that the songs always either have to advance plot reveal character or be funny or surprising in some way or some combo of the three and if the song doesn't achieve that if the song isn't moving story forward um or revealing something then it's not going to work and so a lot of the songs that are like oh that's a great song will listen to it and it's like you'll get two lines in the chorus that work but the rest of it lyrically doesn't make sense or isn't the right conceit or oh wait i thought this was a breakup song but it's really about something else and so we yeah it's a it's a it's a it's a complicated process yeah it sounds like it so i guess we're not getting any baby shark in there at all i mean listen we did uh what does the fox say this season so nothing's impossible i know i couldn't believe you did that you almost did i'm a gummy bear so believe me we've we've talked about it oh my god that's really funny um what else can you tell us about this phenomenal cast that we've already talked about i mean every time alex sings it's just so emotional so incredible vocally and and alex and i have talked about that um but even you know john and and jane and everybody and i mean the whole cast tell me about working with them the songs the the choreography how that all comes together you know we have such a deep bench of incredibly really talented performers and certain people like skyler and alex where it's just effortless for them being broadway performers um we have people who've come in with different degrees of experience with it but every single person approaches it um they just dive head first into doing it and mandy moore is such an amazing choreographer and she always it's never about like what kind of move does mandy want here it's always about her working with the people in their own instruments to create what works right for them and their bodies and so it's a very collaborative process and um you know i'm very fortunate to have a cast that's just so willing to go for it and play and it really is kind of like uh boot camp i mean when people aren't performing when people aren't shooting they're either in the recording booth or they're in the dance studio with mandy and there's just an endless flow of work constantly happening and you know we all kind of thrive off of that energy and it is a little bit like theater and that we're all kind of this sort of repertory thing we're doing together and um you know i just feel very and also that they they they all challenge me because they all they all they all challenge me in the best ways because they have a lot of strong feelings about their characters and they have a lot of um they're very passion every one of them is very passionate and so wanting to be true and wanting to be authentic and wanting to get to the reel of what everything is and i think that's hopefully part of why the show um resonates with people is because we're we're always trying to dig deeper and we're always trying to be true to my experience their experience the writer's experiences and hopefully within that truth comes some sort of universality very quickly last question for you if you could have one person one star that you want to guest star on the show who would be your go-to person and why i mean taylor swift was the first one to pop into my head all right taylor yeah billy eilish was the second one that popped into my i think it would be very interesting to get like a real pop star and allow them to actually really do some um real acting but also show off their vocal chops at the same time and to get maybe audiences to see them in a way that they're not accustomed to seeing them but like with everything else in this show to like um explore something that's going on beneath the surface and to you know not judging a book by its cover and to really allow them to do some uh use their acting chops if they wanted to so that seems very exciting to me and then i have wishlists of big broadway stars and people like hugh jackman and neil patrick harris and people like that and you know i've got running lists of people i thought you were going to go with a broadway star so when you mention billy eilish taylor swift i was like oh wait okay i get that so i'm putting my vote in for let's see josh groban um billy joel can we get billy joel that'd be we've done awesome billy joel songs so yeah sure i'll i'll send you my list later thank you so much i i'm praying that and fingers crossed you guys are renewed for season three because i just i love the show and it's phenomenal and what a great cast and and thank you so much for creating it to be honest thank you for your support absolutely thanks for talking with me have a good afternoon thank you alison thanks you