Latest news with #Schmigadoon!
Yahoo
10-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Cecily Strong Is a Mom! Comedian Welcomes First Baby, a Girl, with Fiancé Jack: 'I Won the Lottery'
Cecily Strong is a mom! The comedian and actress, 41, has welcomed her first baby with her fiancé Jack on April 2, sharing the exciting news on Instagram a little over a week later on Thursday, April 10. "It's been a week and a day with my beautiful squirmy baby girl," the Schmigadoon! star captioned a sweet aerial photo of herself sleeping next to her baby girl's bassinet. "I recognize all her little squirms and kicks from when she was on the other side of me and now I get to say 'see what I was talking about!' " Strong added. "She makes Robert De Niro faces and snorts when she is super determined on the boob. She's gonna be stronger than me in about a week. Her squeaks and sighs are my favorite noises on earth." Without sharing her daughter's name, Strong gushed over her newborn, saying, "Born with a full head of dark hair which made me scream 'whoo hoo!' while pushing. And I've been screaming 'Whoo hoo' every day since because she's absolutely perfect and I won the lottery." Related: Who Is Cecily Strong's Fiancé, Jack? All About His Relationship with the SNL Alum Calling her birth story "relatively easy," Strong joked she got a "glorious epidural" but is still recovering from the pains of birth. "I guess I'll be healing for a while no matter what kind of magical thinking I did beforehand about being back on the Peloton or not eating cookies every day or whatever other hilarious ideas I may have had pre World Changing Forever Day April 2nd," she said. The new mom says she's "so in love and so tired" calling the experience "the greatest dream but it's real." She also took the time to praise her fiancé, saying he "is the best dad I could ever have imagined (he is a diapering/swaddling/bottle washing/breakfast cooking/medicine picker upper/tech support with Baby Brezza handling/dog cuddling so she never feels left out/breastfeeding and pumping helping pro and is at this moment wearing the baby and listening to classical music for babies) and best partner I could have imagined (this man hand fed me crispy rice from Blue Ribbon Sushi in the hospital)." Never miss a story — sign up for to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. Back in November, Strong shared she was pregnant in a lengthy Instagram post. The Saturday Night Live alum could be seen posing in the mirror with her baby bump poking through a shirt that read, "pregnant pro choice proud." "A couple years ago I did a piece on SNL as Goober the Clown who had an abortion the day before her 23rd birthday. I'm happy to report that same clown is now very happily pregnant from IVF at 40," Strong shared in her caption. She continued to share her fear surrounding the upcoming election as a woman who got pregnant with the help of in vitro fertilization (IVF). "It's kind of insane and scary to disclose all of this. But for me- it's much scarier to think about what could happen after Tuesday's election," she wrote of the then-upcoming election. Related: Cecily Strong Is Pregnant, Expecting First Baby with Fiancé as She Opens Up About Fertility Struggles: 'Let's All Please Vote' Strong revealed in March 2024 that she is engaged to her longtime partner, Jack, who popped the question in December 2023 after four years of dating. "I got engaged," she told her former costar Seth Meyers during a visit to Late Night with Seth Meyers. "I know... You always said, 'No one will ever love you and you will never get married' — you were wrong!" she joked to Meyers, who teased, "I am eating my words." She went on to explain that Jack tried to surprise her, but accidentally spoiled the proposal when he showed her his cell phone. 'One day he was like, 'I'm so inundated with emails and texts, look at this. ' And he showed me his phone, and the first text was from a friend that said, 'How did it go?! Ring emoji,' " Strong recalled. "And then, I was like. 'Oh no, should I?' And he went, 'Did you see that?' And I was like, 'I could try very hard to lie, but…' So then I knew." Read the original article on People
New York Times
06-02-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
This Choreographer Is Sending Love Letters to His Dance Heroes
If Christopher Gattelli's choreography looks familiar, that's probably the point. A veteran of more than 20 Broadway shows and a devotee of movie musicals, he has an encyclopedic dance brain, a catalog of musical theater references he deploys throughout his work onstage and onscreen. Homage is his calling card. And that makes him a very clever satirist. His two current projects — the stage adaptation of the television show 'Schmigadoon!,' at the Kennedy Center in Washington through Sunday; and Broadway's 'Death Becomes Her,' at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater — both feature wickedly detailed sendups of 'musical theater dance.' For Gattelli, 52, those scare quotes might as well be hugs. Barbed as his dance humor can be, it's underpinned by his affection for the genre, in spite and because of its excesses and quirks. 'It's easy to get snarky when you're spoofing something you're so familiar with,' he said in an interview. 'It's easy to get all the digs in. But I'm truly writing love letters to all of my dance heroes.' In his choreography for 'Schmigadoon!' on AppleTV+, he all but addressed those letters by name. For the show's first season — which followed a 21st-century couple stranded in a world where every day is a Golden Age musical — Gattelli channeled the knee-slapping, heel-clicking ebullience of the choreographers Agnes de Mille and Michael Kidd. For the second season, set in the grittier environs of 'Schmicago,' he brought in the pigeon-toed slinkiness of Bob Fosse and the splayed-fingers jazz of Michael Bennett. The choreography for the stage version (based on that first season), which Gattelli also directs, is even giddier and broader. Now, when the performers sing out 'S-C-H-M-I-G-A-D-O-O-N' in the opening number, à la 'Oklahoma!,' they also spell the letters with their bodies, à la 'Y.M.C.A.' In 'Death Becomes Her,' which Gattelli choreographed and directed, the references are slightly less pointed, but the dance jokes are just as sharp. Based on the 1992 film — a dark comedy in which two women drink a potion that promises eternal youth, emphasis on eternal — the musical adds a chorus of body-suited dancers as 'Immortals.' They delight in their own sinister sinuosity, like the self-aware dance ensemble of Fosse's 'Pippin.' And Gattelli ensures that the showstopping 'Death Becomes Her' number 'For the Gaze' lives up to its own double entendre title: There are parades of feathered Ziegfeld Follies showgirls, and enough shoulder shimmies and hip thrusts to power a disco-era variety show. (A dancer in a black bob wig even cartwheels in for a cameo as Liza Minnelli, jazz hands flying.) The dancer and actress Ariana DeBose, who appeared in the television version of 'Schmigadoon!,' said in a phone interview that she appreciates Gattelli's multilayered dance humor. 'He understands how to build these big, glorious spectacles, and that energy is going to translate to any audience,' she said. But for DeBose, a fellow musical theater enthusiast who started as a dancer on Broadway, 'a lot of the magic happened when we were chatting about the great film stars and theater stars who excelled in dance and how we could emulate their particular qualities,' she said. 'We were referencing Vera-Ellen in 'White Christmas,' Donna McKechnie in 'A Chorus Line' — they meant something to us.' On a recent Zoom call between 'Schmigadoon!' rehearsals in Washington, Gattelli discussed his approach to dance-based satire. These are edited excerpts from the conversation. When did you start using dance to make people laugh? Some of my earliest choreography jobs were for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS events. That's the kind of audience that will get 90 percent of the theater jokes you make, even the deep cuts. So we would create these opening numbers that would spoof everything. Hearing my peers, my community, laughing — the bug really bit me then. How do you convey archness — the raised eyebrow — in dance? The dancing body is usually such a vulnerable, earnest thing. Even archness has to come from an earnest place. That happens most naturally when the dancers are addressing the audience directly. It helps in 'Death Becomes Her' that we begin with Viola Van Horn, Michelle Williams's character, addressing the audience. When the Immortals come out for that first number and flirt with the audience, it doesn't feel like a cheap wink — it feels like they're helping her tell the story. The television version of 'Schmigadoon!' created stage-style musical numbers for the screen. Are they funnier now, onstage? What I think is funny is that I'm now doing the opposite of what was happening in most of those Golden Age movies: Those choreographers were usually taking gorgeous stage dances and trying to make them fit on film. The stage is honestly a much more comfortable arena for me — this is the place and the history I know best. And so I felt like I could take the vision even further, like I was directing and choreographing the numbers the way they had always been intended. Especially because I have more bodies to play with, or at least more bodies that people can see all the time, which automatically amps everything up. Specificity seems like a big part of the humor in 'Schmigadoon!,' too. Oh, definitely. When I was first choreographing these numbers, I would sit in the room and show the dancers YouTube videos of the old musicals, and then follow up with emails full of links. Like, 'Watch what they're doing at four minutes into 'June Is Busting Out All Over.' Look at this moment from 'Dance at the Gym.'' I really got in there. [laughs] Most audience members can quote a few lines from Broadway songs. But not many can quote Broadway choreography. How do you make sure that kind of dance joke lands? I think the key to that is to add details that, even if the average audience member doesn't know where they're from, they'll go, 'Oh, I've seen that before.' Like in 'With All of Your Heart,' Ariana's big number from the first season of 'Schmigadoon!,' we put in this toe-tapping moment that's from 'Step in Time' in 'Mary Poppins,' when Mary is dancing with the chimney sweeps. It's not exactly famous, but it is iconic. Even if people can't name that moment, it will be familiar in a way that makes them, I hope, feel like they're in good hands. And if they can name it, then it's a great little Easter egg. Musical satire can be nihilistic — like 'The Book of Mormon' — but your work seems fundamentally optimistic. Is it? Well, I like to lead with kindness. I feel like I tend to choose shows that I can do that with, or those shows tend to choose me. Even a show like 'Death Becomes Her,' which we call a cautionary tale, the idea is still to lift up, not to push down. I've been a part of hits, and I've been a part of misses, but the thing I'm always going for is joy. And big belly laughs.
Washington Post
28-01-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
How ‘Schmigadoon!' went from TV show to stage musical
NEW YORK — Rhubarb squares, French éclairs and flambéed pears are among the delectable rhymes on the menu this mid-January morning at a Times Square rehearsal hall, where the team behind the 'Schmigadoon!' stage musical is cooking up a new song about sugary indulgences. As Kevin Del Aguila and Brad Oscar sing the tune, in which their closeted characters use baked goods as a metaphor for their romantic tastes, their alternating lyrics converge on a shared fondness for a particular filling. 'Especially if they're apricot,' the actors sing in harmony, widening their eyes and turning toward each other with epiphanic affection. 'I thought I was the only one.' All the while, Cinco Paul is beaming. As the co-creator of the Apple TV Plus series 'Schmigadoon!' and the writer behind this Kennedy Center-bound stage adaptation, Paul relishes hearing his songs leap from page to stage. When he's not gently flagging internal rhymes that slipped past the actors or relaying how he got the spoofing songs legally approved, the 60-year-old is explaining the tune's inspiration. 'I really do love rhubarb squares,' the ever-wholesome Paul says. 'You write what you know.' 'Aha!' Del Aguila exclaims. 'I knew this was autobiographical.' Well, not autobiographical — but undeniably personal. A lifelong lover of Broadway musicals, Paul co-wrote such animated blockbusters as 'Despicable Me,' 'Horton Hears a Who!' and 'The Secret Life of Pets' before circling back to his childhood passion in recent years. After serving as the showrunner on the 'Schmigadoon!' series, Paul penned the book, music and lyrics for the stage version beginning its world premiere at the Kennedy Center's Eisenhower Theater this week — a rare leap for a TV show and a splashy get for the venue. 'Cinco has one of the purest hearts, and obviously is so gifted to be able to create a world, imagine it, write the songs,' says Ann Harada, the only actor from the streaming series reprising her role onstage. 'He's the god of 'Schmigadoon!' To follow somebody who has a vision like that is such a pleasure.' Growing up in Arizona, Paul fell for musicals while devouring his mother's cast albums for 'Camelot,' 'South Pacific' and 'Guys and Dolls.' As a high school freshman, he was recruited to play the piano for a student production of 'How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying' and promptly found community among the theater kids. When he applied to the University of Southern California's film school three decades ago, he wrote that his show-business goal was to revive the movie musical. For years, that ambition went on the back burner. Once Paul and his creative partner, Ken Daurio, wrote the screenplay for 2010's 'Despicable Me' — the family-friendly juggernaut about a supervillain turned hero and his army of gibberish-spouting Minions — the duo were recruited to pen a pair of sequels, among other animated endeavors. But after 'Despicable Me 3' came out in 2017, Paul decided to step away from the franchise — which has now generated more than $5 billion at the global box office — and used his newfound cachet to get a passion project off the ground. 'If it wasn't for 'Despicable Me,'' Paul says, 'there would be no 'Schmigadoon!'' At that point, the concept had been sitting with Paul for a quarter-century. After watching the 1981 movie 'An American Werewolf in London,' which begins with two backpackers trudging through the English wilderness, Paul found himself tickled by the parallels between the film's premise and that of the 1954 musical 'Brigadoon,' in which a pair of hunters stumble upon a mystical Scottish village. Imagining a riff on those plots — what if a backpacking couple discovered a town where everyone communicates via show tunes? — Paul sat at his piano and composed a song titled 'Not That Kinda Gal.' 'Then I kind of just filed it away for literally 25 years,' Paul says, 'because I didn't know exactly what to do with it.' 'Schmigadoon!' aired its Golden Age-inspired first season in 2021, starring Cecily Strong and Keegan-Michael Key as the central couple and an ensemble packed with Broadway stars: Alan Cumming, Kristin Chenoweth, Aaron Tveit, Jane Krakowski, Ariana DeBose. After lampooning the likes of 'The Music Man,' 'Carousel' and 'Oklahoma!' in that initial installment, the show returned in 2023 for a second season that parodied the seedier musicals of the 1960s and '70s. Although Paul wrote 25 songs for a third season, which would have ventured into the '80s and '90s, Apple canceled the series. Paul, however, wasn't done with 'Schmigadoon!': During the Hollywood writers strike, he wrote a stage adaptation of the show's first season. Initially, Paul only imagined the musical being licensed for high school productions. But soon enough, he found there was an appetite for something glitzier. When Jeffrey Finn, the artistic director for the Kennedy Center's Broadway Center Stage series, was approached about producing the project, he needed 'less than a millisecond' to say yes. For a series that typically stages musical revivals for limited runs, the chance to mount a world premiere was a natural next step Finn had long been eyeing. 'This felt like the absolute right project to be able to do Broadway Center Stage's first world premiere,' Finn says. 'We knew the story that Cinco had so brilliantly created. It wasn't a world where we had to figure out, 'What does this new musical want to be?' We already knew where we were, so I felt that we were miles ahead in the development.' While Paul acknowledges that reassembling the streaming series's cast would have been a dream, he always knew that wasn't going to happen. 'The only way we ever got that cast initially was because it was during covid and people were available,' he says. 'Really, the best thing for the material to prove that it exists beyond the TV show, and beyond that cast, is to cast all new people.' Two-time Tony nominee Alex Brightman ('Beetlejuice') and Sara Chase ('The Great Gatsby') are now the bickering couple Josh and Melissa, alongside Broadway standouts Del Aguila, Oscar, Isabelle McCalla, Ryan Vasquez, McKenzie Kurtz, Javier Muñoz and Emily Skinner. And Harada reprises her role as Florence Menlove, the exasperated first lady of Schmigadoon. 'It's going to be very difficult for me not to cheese out onstage,' Brightman says. 'What thrills me is getting real high-class musical theater people who love musical theater doing the thing they love at the highest, most absurd form.' Paul added a slew of new songs and reprises. One tune — Oscar and Del Aguila's 'I Thought I Was the Only One' — was penned specifically for the stage show. Other numbers — including Kurtz's 'I'm Not That Kinda Gal,' the song that started it all — were restored after being cut from the series. To incorporate the new music and retain the existing songs, all while reducing the overall run time, Paul took a 'very aggressive' approach to cutting down the dialogue, streamlining scene transitions and reducing the number of sets. 'I won't say we didn't have work to do, but the structure was there. The story was there,' says Christopher Gattelli, the Tony winner who is directing the stage show after choreographing the streaming series. 'The first time we read through it, it just felt so good and like a complete piece.' Asked about his hopes for the show's future, Paul doesn't hedge. 'I want everybody in the world to see 'Schmigadoon!'' he says with a sheepish grin. Brightman, who starred in the 2023 production of 'Spamalot' that transferred from the Kennedy Center to Broadway, is more specific. 'This is a Broadway show,' Brightman says. 'I just don't know how you don't like this. If you like musicals, you will like this. There's no way you won't. And if you don't, you're wrong.' John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Eisenhower Theater, 2700 F St. NW. 202-467-4600. Dates: Jan. 31-Feb. 9. Prices: $99-$315.
