VIDEO: DEAR EVAN HANSEN Creators Talk to Megyn Kelly About Turning a Hit Musical Into a Book

The Broadway hit "Dear Evan Hansen" elicited such a huge response from fans that it's now hitting bookstore shelves as a novel. "Dear Evan Hansen" composers Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, Steven Levenson, the musical's playwright, and Val Emmich, who wrote "Dear Evan Hansen: The Novel," joined Megyn Kelly this morning to talk about the challenges of turning the beloved musical into a book.

Emmich opened up about the challenge of turning a musical into a book, explaining, "I also suffer from anxiety ... but that's what I held onto, the emotional connection I felt to the story, and that is how I got myself through it. I went deeper into the anxiety which I think serves the novel."

Pasek and Paul also spoke about winning an Academy Award for La La Land. Paul joked, "With Ryan Gosling singing it, we had a responsibility for him to not sound like a dork so we have to write something that sounds somewhat cool."

Watch the interview below!

Dear Evan Hansen will soon be turned into a young adult novel as author Val Emmich teams with the musical's creators to create a page-turning work of fiction from the hit musical. In celebration of its release, there will be a national book tour featuring Emmich, Steven Levenson, Benj Pasek, and Justin Paul. Songs will be performed alongside the novel's release.

The tour will stop in ten cities across the US: Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Ann Arbor, Chicago, Denver, Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

For tickets and information, click here.

On the choice to adapt the show into a novel, musical bookwriter Steven Levenson explained: "We have felt a certain discomfort with the fact that it is so expensive to come see the show, we can only have 1,000 people a night, and there are so many people who can't come to New York. There were people responding to the show without having even seen it, and we did feel like, what are some ways that we can get this show to more people?"

Emmich used the show's score to draw inspiration. "Whenever I was unsure of what was going on beneath the surface of a character's emotions, I could always put on the music."

Little, Brown Books will release Dear Evan Hansen: The Novel on October 9, 2018.