From show creator Austin Winsberg, the NBC series Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist follows Zoey Clarke (Jane Levy), a computer coder who suddenly finds herself with the ability to hear the innermost thoughts and desires of those around her – whether family, co-workers or complete strangers – in the form of popular songs that are often accompanied by full-on performance numbers. While the jury is still out on her ability being an unwanted curse or an incredible gift, Zoey finds herself connecting with the world in a way that can’t help but deeply affect her. The series also stars Mary Steenburgen, Peter Gallagher, Skylar Astin, Alex Newell, John Clarence Stewart, and Lauren Graham.
In Episode 9, “Zoey’s Extraordinary Silence,” Zoey tries to help her father Mitch’s caregiver, Howie (Zak Orth), reconnect with his estranged daughter (Sandra Mae Frank) and see her for the capable woman that she is. To discuss what it took to put the incredibly moving deaf performance number in that episode together, show choreographer and producer Mandy Moore got on the phone with Collider for this 1-on-1 chat. During this talk, Moore shared how she got involved with Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist, making an ASL dance number with Los Angeles-based group Deaf West Theater Company happen, what it took to have Levy, as the series lead, do all of the performance numbers in one episode, naming the most fun performances she’s created, and more.
COLLIDER: Because of shows like So You Think You Can Dance and Dancing with the Stars, choreographers have really been put in spotlight in a way that they’ve never been before. Since choreographers haven’t always gotten that attention, what’s that side of things like for you?
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MANDY MOORE: First of all, it’s a massive trip, and so weird. I remember being on a plane, early on when So You Think You Can Dance was at its height, like Season 3 or Season 4, and I was listening to people behind me talk about a contemporary number that I had done, and they didn’t know it was me in front of them. I was like, “This is so weird!” Someone was like, “Oh, yeah, Mandy’s contemporary number with Sabra and . . .” I was like, “What?!” The fact that anyone would be able to even connect those things is really cool, I have to be honest, and I do credit those shows for doing that for choreographers. There was a long time there where I think people thought that choreography was just what dancers made up. It’s a really cool wave to ride, right now. Dance is coming back. For a long time, it was gone in television and film and the commercial world. From the early to mid ‘90s, there was nothing going on. I moved to L.A., during that time, and I remember being like, “Geez, I’m really glad I moved here. There’s nothing happening.”
How did you get involved Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist?
MOORE: I had a lunch meeting that (creator) Austin [Winsberg] happened to be at because we were actually meeting for a different project. We had reconnected. We’d known each other years before, and I hadn’t seen him in a long time. He reached out to me, about a week after that meeting, and sent me the script for the pilot in an email and just said, “Hey, I think this pilot’s gonna get picked up. If it does, I’d really love to have you involved.” I read the script in the car, as soon as he emailed it to me, and I loved it. It really popped off the page for me. I understood this world, in my head. I don’t know how else to explain it, but the way that I saw it in my head, I was like, “This is going to be amazing. It’s so unique and fun.”
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Just the idea of being able to hear what people think through song and dance in big musical numbers, I was like, “Yes, sign me up!” So, I ended up getting the job, and Austin, Richard Shepard, the director of the pilot, and I spent many a weekend, hours a day, sitting in a room together, watching videos of dance and talking about what the language was going to be in this show. That was a big thing. There’s a lot of different ways for dance to live, obviously. Austin is very clear with what he likes and what he doesn’t like, which I love. He was like, “I don’t want dance to feel like a music video, in this show. It needs to never time jump. It needs to feel like it lives in the world. We’re never gonna change the lighting and make it something that it isn’t. These people are never gonna change costumes. It’s not gonna be this parody music video type of show, when it comes to dance.” And then, I was totally hooked and like, “You’re speaking my language, man.” I loved that.
At the same time, were you ever like, “Okay, we can do this for a pilot, but how are we going to do this, every week”?
MOORE: I did a season of Glee, years ago, but other than that, this is my first big episodic thing. I’ve worked as a choreographer, scene by scene, but never as a season choreographer, so part of it might’ve been ignorance. I was like, “Sure, we can do it!” Also, I think part of it is that I’m a psycho. I love a challenge, and I’m never gonna say no to dance. I believe that, if you get good systems in place, and you have actors who are willing to go there and do it, and you have a showrunner who wants it, I really think you can make it happen, and I think that’s what happened with Zoey’s. We have a really perfect concoction of all the things, working together. I’m not gonna say it’s easy. It’s hard to put that many numbers up. We did a tally and we did 61 numbers over this season. It was hard, but it was so fun. It’s so much fun to work on the and create it.
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I will say that our days were very long. We were prepping the episode that was coming up, we were teaching most of the numbers that were happening in that episode, and we were shooting, all at the same time. So, for our department, it sounds very strange, but it’s all about compartmentalizing and being like, “Okay, I’ve got two hours this morning, from eight to 10, to create ‘Fight Song,’ so I have to create that work.” Then, I know that, in order to get ready for that, I have to do my pre-production before. I produce on the show, too, so it was really great to be able to reach out and be like, “Okay, writers, I need that from this. Austin, can you give me that? Can we work on that song a bit more?” It was just all of us being really in time with one another, knowing that these numbers were important, and just as important as the scene work. I never felt like dance or performance was second fiddle. We were just as important as the scene work, which I really appreciated.
I thought the performance of “Fight Song” is just incredible and so very moving. How did you approach putting together a deaf performance number?
MOORE: It all starts with the conceit of the number. Austin knew that he wanted Zoey to experience a heart song from a deaf perspective and he knew that he wanted no words. We decided on that style of music. We originally produced the song to sound very much like the original, but it didn’t feel like it had the emotion. So, we went back to the music producer and said, “Maybe it needs to have more strings.” It’s so beautiful with a cello, and the cello could be the main melody of the lyric, so that we, as hearing people, could still connect to it. That was a big thing. I don’t speak ASL. I don’t know it. But I knew that, for myself, as a viewer, I would still have to feel something from this language that maybe I don’t understand, but I’m starting to get it by the body language or the dynamic or the texture.
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So, we decided that the song needed to feel more emotional. And then, I had to learn ASL, and it was so hard. I don’t know if you know much about ASL, but it doesn’t translate directly. It’s not like I could send it to someone who speaks ASL and say like, “Just translate this,” because it’s not the same. There are many different ways to translate it, just like there’s many different ways for you and I to talk about something that’s the same thing. When we all agreed upon what gestures to use and how we were gonna translate it, the next big thing for me was that I didn’t wanna stop on all of the beauty of ASL, with a bunch of dance moves. Maybe the way that you and I see dance is very different than someone who maybe doesn’t dance like we do, so my number one thing was just telling this story.
The story is this young girl, standing up for herself and saying, “I can do this, dad,” and all of her friends around her saying, “We all can do it. We can all stand on our own two feet.” So, for me, it was really more about creating visuals and a connection to the music and the ASL, and less about dance, per se. It’s not kicks and turns and jumps. That was really hard. I did three different versions of that song, all the way up until the day before we shot, and I taught them three different versions. As a team, we couldn’t quite decide what was gonna land the best ‘cause it’s a really delicate number with a very delicate tone to it. One degree, one way or the other, it could have gone really badly, so we were very conscious of that. When I finally watched it all put together, I was like, “Man, this works. It’s really beautiful.”
This is a show that seems to just have endless challenges. Right before creating the deaf performance, you had an episode where your lead was doing all the performance numbers in one episode. What was it like to do something like that?
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MOORE: Thank god for Jane Levy. That’s all I have to say about that. We had known for awhile that was gonna happen. She was having a meltdown about it for months because she was like, “How are we gonna do this?!” And I was like, “We’ve got this. It’s just step by step.” A big part of it was that I had to create a lot of it, I had to create, I’m not gonna say without her, but with my skeleton crew and my team first. She was shooting, every day, so we’d have to have discussions with her. When she’d have a break for an hour because they were shooting something else, she’d come up to the dance studio and we’d talk about what she was supposed to feel in a scene, or what she sees it as, and then I’d tell her how I saw it. We’d have those conversations, and then I’d go away and create a bit.
Then, when we had a couple hiatus days, those were my days to actually rehearse with her, so I knew that I had to be ready to teach her and get it going. And she was amazing. It was not easy, but it was also very satisfying to see her really grab onto the material. I think she’s brilliant in that episode, and I think we did a really good job of having very different numbers, even though it’s all her. I think they all felt really different. She was just gung-ho. One thing about her is that she will go 1000%. Sometimes you even have to be like, “Jane, calm down,” ‘cause she’s so full-out. But without those hiatus days, logistically, it never would have happened, so I really thank the production for that. They were like, “Okay, there’s no way. We can’t have her shoot for 16 hours, and then go rehearse for two hours. It doesn’t work that way.” So, those hiatus days were golden for us. That’s the only way we got it done.
I don’t want to ask you to pick a favorite number because that would be insane, so has there been a most fun performance number for you to do?
MOORE: Out of the whole season? I have to be honest, I have a bunch of them. I loved doing “All I Do is Win,” in the pilot. Those boys were so funny, and we had so much fun creating that. Dancing with Peter [Gallagher], anytime, ever. Having Mary [Steenburgen] be in reality while he was in the heart song was so fun. I’m probably most proud of “Crazy,” so far. I really thought that “Crazy,” in Episode 8, was really beautifully shot and performed. It’s one of those where I actually really liked all of the steps in it, instead of wishing I could change a step or have done something a little different. In Episode 10, there’s an awesome dance battle that’s coming up, that I’m really excited for everyone to see. That one has a lot of dance in it, and it’s not the normal dance that we do. I hired some OGs to be in it, so it was really fun. I don’t know. I have so many. I really had such a good time this season.
This show sometimes has a solo number or a duet, but there are also a lot of big performance numbers and you have a wide variety of locations that you’re working in. Is it more challenging to do a performance number in a wide open, outdoor location, or is it more challenging to do one in a tighter location?
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MOORE: Each number really has its own challenges, but sometimes the stuff on location is really hard because we don’t have access to the location until right before we shoot. You can imagine, as a creator, that it’s hard to be like, “Okay, imagine that this is a mall,” or “Imagine that this is a bar.” That’s challenging. For “TiK ToK,” with Lauren Graham, we had the morning of to actually teach her that. We created a mock-up bar in my dance studio, but it’s just never the same as when you’re in there, so that was super challenging. But I also do like the challenge of trying to figure out what we can do in the space and how we can be creative within the space. I almost like that better than just the wide open space. With the wide open space, you’re just like, Well, I guess we’ll dance.” But if there are things like bars or stools or steps, it immediately gives you a lane that you can be creative within, and I really love that. I think it’s fun.
Because you have done so many different kinds of choreography in your career, is there anything that you’d still like to do, that you feel like you haven’t gotten the chance to do yet?
MOORE: I would really love, at some point, to get to Broadway and do a show. My dream is to be able to create an all-dance show that has no dialogue and that’s all told through dance. I just think that would be so fun. I’d really love for it to also be in an interactive space, where people could experience it in a way that maybe is different than just sitting in a seat. It would be like a combination of probably a million shows that are out there, but I would love to do that. Meanwhile, I just like having dance be in a lot of different kinds of worlds, with these stories that are creatively told. I just think Zoey’s is really special. It’s got a lot of heart and a lot of joy, and I love dance to live in that world.
Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist airs on Sunday nights on NBC.
