If you’ve been watching ABC, you can’t miss those commercials with townspeople who look like they’re dressed from the Renaissance period singing that awfully catchy tune of Gaaaaa-laaaaa-VANT! You’ve heard it right? Wondered what it was all about and why a show that kinda looks like it should be serious has people gallivanting around quite playfully.
Well Galavant is the newest ABC Musical TV Series that fun, funny, a little bit lewd and crude, much like the Monty Python, but will muster up a lot of adult laughter. As Executive Producer, Dan Fogelman explains, it’s a show for an audience who would love “Monty Python, Princess Bride, or Game of Thrones!
Joshua Sasse is the sexy guy who plays the role of Galavant. And there are more amazing stars set to appear on the show like John Stamos, “Hugh Bonneville (Downtown Abby), Ricky Gervais, and “Weird Al” Yankovic.
In November I got the chance to watch the pilot and talk with Dan Fogelman (Executive Producer), Joshua Sasse, Alan Menken (Composer/video conference), and Glenn Slater (Lyricist/video conference).
Joshua Sasse (Glenn Slater in the background) Photo Credit: Staci from 7 on a Shoestring
Q&A
Galavant: Where did this whole concept come from?
Dan: We did Tangled and I was working on this whole Princess Bride type idea and I have done another show a couple of years ago the last two years, it is called “The Neighbors.” Alan (Menken) came with Glenn (Slater) and we did a little musical episode and Alan got an Emmy nomination for it. It was this show that didn’t get a ton of attention and we really liked it Alan came in and we got this attention. While we were working on that I had this script and I thought hey maybe we can turn this in to a musical. Alan wrote the original song.
We asked Joshua how he prepared for the role and if he had done musicals previous to this.
He explained that as an actor in England you have to have “a fair amount of strings to your bow to get anywhere because it’s kind of tough crowd” He joked that he was conned into doing Galavant (Alan gave a very loud “ha” when he said this). When he first auditioned he had no clue it was a musical and was hesitant to sing for Alan Menken. He stressed what an incredible team they are to work with. “I think Alan’s music is so magical is because of the way it builds and the key change and then another key change and he also does like 3 tempo changes It’s incredibly hard to sing and keep up with when doing the tango. They really walk you through it and it doesn’t matter even if I hadn’t sung before as long as you have got a voice they made it a pleasure.”
Dan thought he was being punk’d when he first met Joshua. He asked him if he could sing when he first met him and his reply was “Yeah, I can sing a little” Then he heard his big booming voice singing a song from Into the Woods for the audition. He said it was instantly clear – they were going to make this TV show.
Must Be the Music
While the pilot has the least amount of music, Glenn Slater and Alan Menken have written 33 songs for the eight episode series. There are 24 songs and with reprises it totals 33 songs, they even threw out quite a few songs that didn’t work for the show. That’s a lot of music, Alan joked that their hands were tired after writing all the songs but really he’s probably written tons more for other projects. Galavant was born out of a script that Dan Fogelman created and he wanted to turn it into a musical. He had worked with Alan Menken and Glenn Slater on Tangled, while he was working on “The Neighbors” Glenn and Alan came in to work on a musical episode with him. He said at the time the show wasn’t getting much attention but after that episode, Alan received an Emmy nomination for the episode and they started to get more attention. That’s when he approached them about his script, shortly after Glen and Alan came up with the show’s original theme song and Galavant was born.
About Galavant:
Screenwriter/executive producer Dan Fogelman (Crazy, Stupid, Love, Tangled, Cars) teams up with Broadway and Hollywood award-winning musical team — composer Alan Menken (The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast) and lyricist Glenn Slater (Tangled) — for a 4-week comedy extravaganza. Once upon a time, the dashing hero, Galavant (Joshua Sasse) lost the love of his life, Madalena (Mallory Jansen), to the evil King Richard (Timothy Omundson). Now, our fallen hero is ready to take revenge and restore his “happily ever after.” But it won’t be without a few twists and turns along the way.
Galavant stars Joshua Sasse as Galavant, Timothy Omundson as King Richard, Vinnie Jones as Gareth, Mallory Jansen as Madalena, Karen David as Isabella and Luke Youngblood as Sid.
Make sure you tune in every Sunday in January for Galavant, each week you can enjoy two episodes for the 8 part musical comedy series. Galavant airs at 8 PM ET/PT on ABC. Follow along on social media to be up to date on all things Galavant.
Galavant FB page and/or are following at https://twitter.com/GalavantABC ?#?Galavant?, and here are more social handles to follow for the show, which premieres on Jan 4 (tonight)!
http://instagram.com/GalavantABC
http://galavantabc.tumblr.com
https://plus.google.com/+GalavantABC/posts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDRL6iuFfFQ
Are you going to watch Galavant?
ABC announces premiere dates for two of its highly anticipated new midseason shows – “Galavant,” a comedy extravaganza and “Marvel’s Agent Carter,” the second action packed series from the creative minds at Marvel, inspired by the feature films “Marvel’s Captain America: The First Avenger” and “Marvel’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” along with the short “Marvel One-Shot: Agent Carter.” “Galavant” will premiere on SUNDAY, JANUARY 4 (8:00-9:00 p.m., ET) and will run two episodes in the one-hour block each week, and “Marvel’s Agent Carter” premieres on TUESDAY, JANUARY 6 (9:00-10:00 p.m., ET).
I was invited to Los Angeles for an all-expense paid trip to the Disney/ABC TV Event. Al opinions are my own.
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