Exclusive: Breaking Down Pasek & Paul and Shaiman & Wittman's Emmy-Nominated Collaboration

In many ways, Only Murders in the Building seems tailor-made for musical theatre fans. From the NYC setting to the cast composed of major Broadway stars, nearly every episode is full of Easter Eggs and references that have made theatrical aficionados smile since its debut in 2021.

The third season of the acclaimed Hulu series tells the story of Martin Short's Oliver Putnam (Broadway director) as he mounts his new play Death Rattle. After a poor review, the play is revamped, becoming the musical extravaganza Death Rattle Dazzle!

For this fictional, in-universe musical, Only Murders showrunner John Hoffman wanted authenticity. And, in the contemporary musical theatre, there are few songwriters more authentic than Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. The duo wrote a smattering of songs for the series, also recruiting other Tony-Award-winning songwriters such as Sara Bareilles, Michael R. Jackson, and Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman.

For one number in particular, Pasek, Paul, Shaiman, and Wittman were tasked with penning a patter song for Charles-Haden Savage, played by Steve Martin. With its intricate rhymes and fast tempo, "Which of the Pickwick Triplets Did It?" proves to be a challenge for the character, which in turn serves as a key plotline in the season.

The four songwriters have now been nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics for the song, and BroadwayWorld sat down to speak with them about the process of their collaboration, crafting the number, and how they knew Steve Martin could pull it off.

This interview has been condensed for clarity and length.

---

Congratulations on the Emmy nomination! How does it feel to be nominated for an Emmy for this song in particular, and what does this recognition mean to you? 

Wittman: I'm absolutely thrilled because the last time we were nominated, I was seated next to Dr. Kevorkian and I took that as a bad sign [laughs]. I feel much more confident in the presence of these three.

Shaiman: It was a hard song to write, but we had such a good time writing it. They're so great up at Only Murders. It's nice, once in a while, to have what feels like dessert.

Can you describe the process of working together on this song? How did you divide the responsibilities of the songwriting amongst yourselves once you were in the room together?

Wittman: It was like four people playing word Yahtzee. It was really fun. The notes from John Hoffman and the storyline were so specific which was a great help and made it more fun to write to character.

Pasek: We got the great pleasure of going to Marc and Scott's studio and being intimidated by all of their big movie and Broadway posters on the wall. We got to go into the rarefied, venerated space and it was really cool. The four of us sat down, with either laptops or Scott with pencil and paper. We had this phrase "Which of the Pickwick triplets did it" to work from. We knew that we wanted to write a patter song for this character and we began from that. What a joyful and fun process it was trying to make each other laugh, trying to build on each other's rhymes, and trying to create the most tongue-twisting patter song that we could for this occasion. We knew that something was working when someone else in the group would laugh. We would always try to better each other's jokes or add internal rhymes or come up with the most wacky and wild word choices. Eventually, we built this song together all in the same room at the same time.

I’m sure you have a kind of musical shorthand when working in your respective songwriting teams. How does that play into the process when you bring in new people to collaborate with who may have a different way of working?

Wittman: It was like being in an old married couple and then getting into a polycule. [laughs] It spiced things up.

Paul: It was quite beautiful because we recognized so many similarities. That same shorthand that Benj and I have, Marc and Scott have, and some of the same struggles that we go through, they go through. We understand so many of the same things and that added to the joy of the experience. We also found that we had that shorthand with each other. I feel like as we were starting to finish each other's sentences and each other's lines (literally), we'd give each other a knowing look because we knew what we could do with that musically. We developed our own shorthand even within this new collaboration, which felt like an old collaboration.

Was there a particular musical theatre patter song that you tried to emulate for this?

Wittman: Marty Short would have huge Christmas parties in LA very much in the old-fashioned way. If Judy Garland had walked in the door, we wouldn't have been surprised. Steve [Martin] got up at one of these and did the whole opening of The Music Man off the top of his head, so we knew he had the strength and the stamina. And we also knew as part of the plot, that it was going to take him a certain amount of episodes to learn it, so that was also sort of the fun of it as well.

Shaiman: With someone who's had such a long career, one forgets what he has accomplished. He's written a musical, he's written plays, he writes books. There really wasn't any doubt that he wouldn't be able to do this. What was surprising was how fantastically open he was to notes during the recording. He was extremely collaborative. 

Benj and Justin, if you win this Emmy, you'll achieve EGOT status. How does the possibility of joining this elite group affect your perspective on this nomination?

Paul: When we think about it, we think about some of our musical heroes from Richard Rodgers and Alan Menken, to Elton John and Jonathan Tunick. The possibility of joining that group feels wild.

We had a legitimately wonderful time working on this season of this show and it feels great to be celebrating that work. You have a lot of collaborations and creative experiences that are hit or miss throughout your career, and this is one of those that was genuinely wonderful from start to finish. Every element of it: the writing was great, the recording was great. The writing team, John Hoffman, the creators of the show, all the other music makers, the people that we wrote songs with, and Siddhartha Khosla who scored the show from top to bottom. It was a great experience and those don't come along very often. 

Pasek: It's so rare in TV that a writer's room and the showrunner and everyone will conspire to make musical theater songs matter as much as they did in this show. They set up the importance of the song over multiple episodes. Sometimes you get on a TV show or in a movie and it's great, but it might not be integral to the plot. The writers did incredible work in making a patter song matter and giving it real stakes. It is featured multiple times throughout the entire series and gets this great payoff in Episode 8. We're really grateful for all of the care and import that was put into making the song matter as much as it did.

Shaiman: On Smash, Scott and I were constantly begging for songs to be set up. It was always such a struggle but this was just such a dream. Scott and I went to the filming one day and didn't even know that our good friend Matthew Broderick was singing it too!

Paul: When they were in the writer's room, they mapped out how this song would function throughout the season. They talked about all these moments but we didn't really expect them all to happen. And they did. That was the miraculous thing. It was the case with all these songs: they made them matter and they didn't overdo it either. 

There also was such restraint on the part of John Hoffman and the whole team in choosing not to have Selena Gomez sing. They found a little moment for her to have a Fosse-inspired moment in Marty [Short]'s head but, aside from that, they decided that this character was not going to sing in the season. We kept waiting for the phone to ring to write a song for her, but it never rang. There was such taste involved and we had so much respect for them.

Pasek: It's so cool because Marc and Scott gave us our very first television job ever, which was Season Two of Smash. We were kind of new to the musical theater writing scene and we submitted a song. Scott and Marc, the musical theater gatekeepers, listened to the song of ours and it was the first time that we had ever really had a song on "Big Boy" TV. We are so excited that we got the opportunity to work with them on this. We've always wanted to collaborate with them and they've been heroes of ours for a long time. It was really nice to get to be in a room with them and get to see how they work and become friends along the way.

Shaiman: It's wonderful to also have been asked to collaborate with the guys, along with the other people that they brought into the show. Michael R. Jackson and Sara Bareilles are wonderful people to be considered on the same level with. It's a great family to be a part of.

---

The first three seasons of Only Murders in the Building are streaming on Hulu.

Watch the Emmy-nominated song below:

Photo Credits: Pasek/Paul- Walter McBride / WM Photos; Shaiman/Wittman- Jennifer Broski