Jennifer Hudson Joins Producing Team of Broadway-Bound SMASH

Emmy,  Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Award winner Jennifer Hudson will join the producing team of the upcoming stage musical  adaptation of SMASH, which is headed to Broadway in Spring 2025.

Hudson, who appeared as a guest star on  season 2 of the fan-favorite NBC series that serves as the basis for the musical, announced the news today on her daytime  talk show, “The Jennifer Hudson Show.” 

Watch clips of Hudson on the SMASH TV series below!

Jennifer Hudson is a Grammy, Oscar, Tony, and Emmy winning artist and entertainment icon. Over her highly acclaimed  career, Hudson has been named one of Time magazine’s “Most Influential People in the World,” received a star on the  Hollywood Walk of Fame, received NAACP Entertainer of the Year, performed at the Super Bowl, sang for world leaders  and has a day named after her in the city of Chicago. Hudson’s nationally syndicated talk show, “The Jennifer Hudson  Show,” has received six Daytime Emmy Award nominations and two nominations for People’s Choice Awards. The show,  which has featured an impressive lineup of guests, earned her the AAFCA “We See You Award” and NAACP Image Awards  for Best Talk Show Host and Best Talk Show. 

This reunites Hudson with SMASH composers Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, and producers Robert Greenblatt and  Neil Meron, following her incredible performance as Motormouth Maybelle in NBC’s production of “HAIRSPRAY LIVE!” in  2016.  

The production will be helmed by 5-time Tony-winning director Susan Stroman, with a score by the Tony- and Grammy winning duo Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman (Some Like It Hot, Hairspray, Mary Poppins Returns, etc.), who wrote over  two dozen songs for the television show, many of which will be used in the musical. They will also be writing additional  new material. The book will be co-written by two of Broadway’s most seasoned craftsmen, Tony-nominated Rick Elice (Jersey Boys, Peter and the Starcatcher) and Tony-winner Bob Martin (The Prom, The Drowsy Chaperone). And Smash’s  Emmy-winning choreographer, Joshua Bergasse, will reprise his role for the stage adaptation. 101 Productions, Ltd. will  serve as General Management.  

Many of the songs Shaiman and Wittman wrote for the television show —including the Emmy-nominated “Let Me Be Your  Star” — will be used in the new musical. And while the story will follow the harrowing and hilarious process of mounting  “Bombshell” (the musical about the life of Marilyn Monroe), the stage version of Smash will also depart liberally from the  series.  

The award-winning creative team for the musical gathered earlier this year in New York for a series of workshop  presentations, following an industry reading in Fall 2023. 

The critically-acclaimed Smash debuted on NBC in February 2012. The show developed a devoted following, but its popularity has only grown in  the following years. The cast performed a charity benefit concert of the songs from “Bombshell” at the Minskoff Theatre  in June of 2015 which sold out in fifteen minutes. It was filmed and eventually streamed during the early days of the  pandemic in 2019 as a benefit for The Actor’s Fund (Entertainment Community Fund).  

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