CENTRAL PARK Creators Loren Bouchard & Nora Smith Talk S2!

Hi, my name is Sarah J. Lieber, and I'm with Broadway World

And thank you, Lauren and Nora, for taking the time to talk to me today. Pleasure

So I wanted to start by asking you about, at the sort of intersection of pretty much everything you've ever done

there's this aspect of musical storytelling. And I wanted to know if you could tell me a little about your background there

and what draws you to kind of creating these mini-musicals in TV

you want to start an art i'd love to um i was kind of raised on musicals my dad we were just

talking about this the other day my dad uh went to college pratt university in brooklyn he showed

up with like a ton of musical albums and he's like i'm a kid with a bunch of musical albums

what do you think of that and um so he was like a brave little 18 year old boy showing up with

And it was like, so it was kind of like a part of the way I was raised

We would go to the Fox Theater in Atlanta and this is too much about my childhood And go see musicals And it was just kind of And then it just so naturally is helpful with storytelling

because it's the thing everybody says. Like when you feel something so much, you have to sing it

But also it's just such a fun way to do it. And like for some reason when you rhyme story beats

they're more fun and more like it makes them more interesting to oh and then one more interesting

way to express a story like a this happens and then this happens you know it's like exposition

made fun all of a sudden um and so it just works really well together like it's yeah yeah

i think that's the end yeah my my background is is kind of that um musical um that was in the

It wasn't necessarily musical theater, capital M, capital T on the stage

It was more like the Muppet show, you know, and, um, I, you know

Disney movies that you know I listened to on records and things like that but it it had the same effect I agree with everything Nora saying In the end it felt to me like doing animation was to get in bed with music as well You

always looking for a way to support one with the other. Absolutely. Without giving too much away, could you tell me some of the musical moments you're

most excited about about this upcoming season? Oh, I have one. The Ingrid Michaelson song that Molly sings, Emmy Raver-Lantman sings as Molly in this story that's otherwise very silly. It's kind of, I won't give too much away, like you said, but it's very much what we would call a triptych with each, or I guess in this case, anyway, the characters are telling a story to each other

And it's got kind of a silly framework for each one. But this song is so beautiful

And it's kind of sudden. All of a sudden you're in a much more sort of melancholy moment

But I just love it so much I find it incredibly affecting every time I heard it And then when Emmy sang it she sang it all the way through in one take And there were a few of us on the call because this is recorded during COVID

And I think we were all in tears. There's another like Molly emotional song in the Fistapuffs episode where she's just singing about

trying to be her who she is herself and it's pretty moving as well like coming from it you

know it's very easy to go back to that teenage girl place for me and it was just really that

was dames on anderson did i ever say that um and it was just really beautiful and it's just

fun when those like because that's a relatively silly episode too i mean it's a little more like

intense drama going on but like to have this musical moment where you're like oh gosh these

are real feelings and I I connect with this like is pretty exciting absolutely well that's all the

time I've got but thank you so much for answering my questions and I hope you have a great rest of

your day thanks Sarah