BWW Special Interview: PETER PAN LIVE! Producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron!

BroadwayWorld.com's Richie Ridge was on hand at PETER PAN's press day where he talked to the stars and creative team about how they are putting together this live TV event. Here, Richie talks to the producers, Craig Zadan and Neil Meron.

Craig Zadan and Neil Meron's productions have earned a total of six Academy Awards, five Golden Globes, 13 Emmy Awards, two Peabody Awards, a Grammy Award, five GLAAD Awards, two NAACP Image Awards, and two Tony Awards with their various feature films, television and theater projects. After successfully producing the 85th Academy Awards, which garnered over 40 million viewers in the U.S. alone, they were invited back to produce the 86th Academy Awards which boasted a U.S. viewership of 45.4 million, making it the most watched Academy Awards since 2000. In 2015, Zadan and Meron will be producing the 87th Academy Awards, making it the third consecutive year in which that Honor has been bestowed upon them.

Other recent projects include executive producing last year's hugely successful, live, three-hour NBC presentation of "The Sound of Music Live!" starring Grammy winner Carrie Underwood as Maria. The landmark broadcast drew a record-breaking 21.3 million viewers, giving the network its highest ratings in seven years and the first live network musical broadcast since the 1950s. Zadan and Meron also produced a four-hour miniseries telling the true story of "Bonnie & Clyde," directed by multiple Oscar-nominee Bruce Beresford, starring Emile Hirsch, Holliday Grainger, and Oscar winners William Hurt and Holly Hunter. The program was also a milestone broadcast, marking the first prime-time scripted show to air simultaneously on three separate networks: A+E, History and Lifetime.

Zadan and Meron's motion pictures include: "Hairspray," "The Bucket List," "Footloose," and the Oscar-winning Best Picture, "Chicago." Their television projects, which have accrued 103 Emmy nominations, include: "Gypsy," "Cinderella," "Annie," "The Music Man," "Life With Judy Garland," "Martin & Lewis," "Serving In Silence," "The Beach Boys," "Brian's Song," "The Three Stooges," "The Reagans," "A Raisin In The Sun," the Golden Globe-nominated TV series "Smash" and the hit series "Drop Dead Diva". Their latest critically acclaimed television movie was a contemporary version of "Steel Magnolias" starring Queen Latifah.

On Broadway, they recently produced the Tony-winning "How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" starring Daniel Radcliffe and John Larroquette, and the Tony-winning "Promises, Promises" starring Sean Hayes and Kristin Chenoweth.

Zadan and Meron's upcoming projects include the live broadcast of the classic musical, "Peter Pan" for NBC. Their new MTV comedy series, "Happyland," premieres later this summer. For the big screen, Zadan and Meron are producing "Pippin" for The Weinstein Company; "All Summer Long," a romantic summer musical utilizing the Beach Boys song catalogue for Fox 2000; "Monster High," based on the billion dollar Mattel franchise, for Universal Pictures; and an untitled crime thriller, based on a true-story from the FBI files, starring Channing Tatum for Sony Pictures.

Q: This was really exciting. I'm glad you did this this year for everybody, we had the best time with all your cast.

A: Aren't they great?

Q: Oh my God, I had the best time last year watching "The Sound of Music". I have the DVD, I watch it all the time. How you pulled off what you pulled off is amazing. Like when the walls would split open and she was back into the Abbey...You get goosebumps just talking about it.

A: Yep, and we have a bunch of that type of presentational things this year too.

Q: Looking at all the set designs, this is even bigger than "The Sound of Music", isn't it?

A: It's much bigger than "The Sound of Music". Again, you don't realize when you get into the world of fantasy, it's much more difficult to pull off and it's much more elaborate.

The key thing about this is the flying. I think that is a big drawing point for the audience because there's kind of like a gut emotional reaction that you get when you see somebody fly. And, then to know that it's happening live, it's even more heightened. Also anything can happen! It's going to be the first and only time we're doing it, so there's excitement on many levels about the flying.

Q: Everyone loves the musical PETER PAN. But you've sort of found things. Talk about some of the additions into this PETER PAN.

A: PETER PAN the stage musical has been very short, it's like a two-hour running time. Our holiday events are three hours so it gives us a chance to explore character and entertainment value. We looked at the piece and we found things that we would like to add, like a great opening number for Captain Hook because we felt Captain Hook was musically underserved. So having Christopher Walken of course led us to creating this really big opening number for him, and I think the BroadwayWorld audiences would be more interested than most in the derivations of some of the songs. Captain Hook's opening song, which is now called "Vengeance," is a song called "Ambition" from "Do Re Mi" with music by Jule Styne and lyrics by Comden and Green. "Vengeance" has a new lyric by Amanda Green, so we kept it all by Styne, Comden and Green. We also wanted to give Wendy another song, which kind of explored her burgeoning feelings and her new feelings of emotions for Peter Pan so we went back to "Do Re Mi" again and we found a song called -

Q: Is it in the show?

A: It's in "Do Re Mi", it's called "I Know About Love" and Amanda rewrote the lyric and it's called "Only Pretend" and it's a really great song for Wendy. There's a duel now between Captain Hook and Peter and we went to the score of "Say, Darling" of course Jule Styne and Comden and Green, and we looked at..."The River Song," I will say for argument's sake "The River Song," you can look it up. Again Amanda wrote a great dueling moment for Peter Pan and Captain Hook. And then the one thing that we just love is a kind of discovery. We decided that we would look at some of the songs that were discarded out of town. There was a beautiful song for Peter that he sang telling about his experience when he went back home. And he looked in the window and he saw that his family had gone on without him. It's a song by Moose Charlap and Carolyn Leigh called "When I Went Home" and it's a beautiful song that we just-When we told them we were going to put it back in they were incredibly moved, especially Moose Charlap's widow. She said it always was one of Moose's favorite songs. She felt really great that it was finding its place again.

Q: Was that cut in San Francisco?

A: It was cut in San Francisco primarily from what I read because it was melancholy. And in this show that they were trying to do it didn't fit in that presentation. But we found a way to bring that tone of more depth for the character and restored it.

Q: I'm thrilled! You've assembled this incredible cast, I'm sure you looked at so many people. To take on that iconic role of Peter Pan, what did you think when Allison [William]'s name came to the table? Tell me how you got her.

A: Actually it's a really interesting story. We're working on developing a feature film at Twentieth Century Fox as a feature and we were seeing people for that movie. One of the people that auditioned for that movie was Allison and we were blown away by her. We realized that we were in the midst of doing the Oscars and PETER PAN, and then they were trying to get us to do that movie at the same time. We just couldn't do it. So we postponed the movie 'til hopefully the spring. And, when we postponed it everything sort of got pushed back. We called Bob Greenblatt and said we just auditioned Allison Williams and she's incredible. And he said, do you think she would do PETER PAN? And it ended up, that's what we ended up doing. We actually didn't audition her for PETER PAN, we auditioned her for that feature film and that's how we sort of fell in love with her, how we discovered her magical abilities as an actress and as a singer.

Q: Let's just talk about your goal and this thing you're trying to do with NBC and where it's going.

A: I just thought of something, which we haven't told anybody. So this will be exclusive.

Q: BroadwayWorld!

A: BroadwayWorld. When we did Gypsy, it was 1995-

Q: No, it was 1993.

A: 1993, the morning after "Gypsy" aired, two things happened. We got the ratings, which were enormous and it was an incredible success. The second thing that happened that morning was that Jule Styne called. And Jule Styne talked about how he had a party at his house, and served dinner and rented big screens.

Q: Big screens were a novelty at that time.

A: There were no big screens at that time, he rented big screens and had-

Q: Thirty inches! [laughs]

A: That was big back then. And he had everybody, all his friends and his family, come over to watch "Gypsy" when it was broadcast. And what he said, of course, thankfully, was how much he loved it and how everybody was appreciative. The last thing he said on the call was "Next? I want you to do PETER PAN." And that was 1993. And here we are, how many years later, and we're doing PETER PAN.

Q: Thank you for that.

A: We haven't told anyone that.

Q: I love that, though. And to hear it from Jule Styne himself-

A: Jule Styne, on the phone, the last thing he said before he hung up was "Next? You gotta do PETER PAN."

Q: You're making this broadcast such a holiday event. Talk about what it all means to reinvent the musical and have millions of people falling in love with it again.

A: We went into this hoping for the best. We were hoping that people would watch "The Sound of Music". We never thought that we'd have 22 million viewers. And people who stayed for three hours! It was amazing to us. There is an audience out there for this kind of thing, and we're here to serve them.

You know, there's the classic line from "Gypsy", "I had a dream." So it's been a dream of ours to really have this tradition evolve and it was a dream when we did "The Sound of Music". We thought wouldn't it be great if it was successful and we had a chance to do it again? And so we are now getting the chance to live out some of that dream, and if this is successful then that continues and then it becomes a tradition. Say, after three times in a row, then it will be a tradition. So we're thrilled to be able to bring Broadway entertainment to TV, especially live TV, to have kind of a hybrid entertainment. It's a mixture of television and the live event. It's kind of thrilling that it's succeeded as well as it has and we hope it continues.

One last thing-The person who deserves all the credit, and must have all the credit because without him none of this would be happening, the person who did "Smash" with us, the person who did these musicals with us, is Bob Greenblatt. Bob Greenblatt is the only network head who would ever in a million years do something like this. He forged ground and joined in a partnership with us to create this kind of entertainment. We owe it all to him. And it was ironic that this year Bob won a Tony Award. So we're so proud of him that he won a Tony!

Live on Thursday night, December 4th at 8/7c will be PETER PAN LIVE!. Preparing to sprinkle fairy dust across America, NBC presents a bold new LIVE television production of the classic Broadway musical that will gather friends, families and anyone who refuses to ever grow up. Following in the footsteps of the phenomenally successful The Sound of Music LIVE! - which drew over 44 million viewers - comes this musical masterpiece that tells the beloved story of Peter Pan, the mischievous little boy who ran away to Neverland. Get ready for show-stopping stars, stunning costumes, extravagant sets and delightful music that will have everyone in your home singing along.