‘Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist’ holiday movie wraps up story
“Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist” is back for the holidays.
The NBC musical series, about a Silicon Valley software engineer who can hear people’s thoughts in the form of songs, was abruptly canceled in June after two seasons but has risen again as a Christmas movie for Roku, which recently premiered.
“It just so happens that Christmas is a great world for Zoey because, like ‘Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist,’ it’s sparkly and heart-forward and magical,” said Jane Levy, who stars as the eponymous Zoey Clarke.
The movie picks up soon after the second season finale, with boyfriend Max (Skylar Astin) suddenly sharing Zoey’s gift of musical mind-reading. The Clarkes are also facing their first holiday season without Mitch (Peter Gallagher), the family patriarch who died at the end of the first season from progressive supranuclear palsy, the same disease suffered by creator Austin Winsberg’s father.
“How do we move on? How do we celebrate the holidays without someone who was such a big part of them?” Winsberg said.
“Zoey is trying to recreate for the family the same Christmas that her family always used to throw every single year.”
Winsberg, whose father was born on Christmas Day, said the story remains personal for him. But the movie itself was the culmination of two years of nonstop work, making “a new musical every eight days,” in his words. “It’s like ‘Zoey’s’ on steroids,” he said. “We’re trying to go as big as we can.”
From the time the movie was
greenlit by Roku in late July, the team had just four months to develop the story, write the script, get the cast back in town and in costume, film and complete post-production.
For Levy and Winsberg, the movie was a chance to finally give Zoey her own musical numbers; for most of the series, she sat by and watched everyone else sing and dance around her.
“The hardest part for me — which is very Zoey — is being able to trust that you did the homework, that you rehearsed. I’m very Type A, I’m a very organized person, but with dance and music, the beauty of it is in letting the music carry you,” said the actor. “It means letting go.”
The musical numbers, more than a dozen through the 90-minute film, flip between holiday classics and Carly Rae Jepsen and Taylor Swift songs. “They need to be ‘heart songs,’ ” Winsberg said, using the phrase
that Zoey’s best friend Mo (Alex Newell) created to describe the numbers in Zoey’s mind. “They need to be songs that are expressing a feeling or emotion. Part of the challenge of doing the movie was finding holiday songs that felt like heart songs, not just ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.’ It had to connote a feeling or emotion of some sort.”
When “Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist” was canceled at NBC, Winsberg had no warning. The movie is the chance to wrap up Zoey’s story and give her the happy ending she always deserved.
Winsberg has ideas for more “Zoey” if Roku is interested, but he wouldn’t confirm that was on the table. For now, Zoey’s family and friends get to sing one final “heart song.”
“This is a show in which I can hear people’s thoughts in musical numbers,” Levy joked. “Anything could happen in this world.”