Rachel Bloom on the ‘Beautiful Mystery’ of the ‘Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’ Series Finale
While four seasons of “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” have explored musical genres from boy bands to country, the one type of music series co-creator and star Rachel Bloom admits the show will not explore before the end is Rebecca’s own style.
“Basically the idea is that part of the music in her mind is her looking inside with all of these perceived narratives so I don’t know how her music sounds,” Bloom told Variety at the show’s Paleyfest event Wednesday. “Really there’s another show in, what is her sound? I don’t know what Rebecca’s sound is. She’s not Rachel Bloom — she’s not doing comedy. It’s a beautiful mystery.”
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The CW series will come to an end April 5 with a two-hour block that consists of its narrative finale episode followed by a concert special that was taped live from Los Angeles, Calif. in mid-March. Bloom shared that originally the final season was only supposed to be 13 episodes, but when she and co-creator/showrunner Aline Brosh McKenna heard from the network that they wanted five more, they built it into their plans to dedicate one hour to the concert special.
The genesis of the special, series star Donna Lynne Champlin said, was the live tour the cast participated in between seasons. “That tour was a labor of love,” she explained. “It showed us how much the fans loved what we do and how much fun we could have with each other. And at one point I think it was Rachel who said, ‘What if we got someone with a camera in here to film this?'”
The result is a 42-minute variety show style piece that incorporates the show’s most recognizable musical numbers, some of which are re-choreographed and some cut down. Shot on stage at the Orpheum Theatre with nine cameras, the original giant pretzel from the pilot episode, an orchestra and multiple backdrop changes, Bloom says the experience of this version of the show taught her “there is something to be said for spectacle.”
“The tour was really low-fi costumes, no sets — because I told myself the music videos were all the best version of the music, so I want the show to feel very much like off-Broadway or just a bunch of kids in a black box space,” Bloom said.
Due to some of the bigness of the live special, the current edit Bloom is working on is coming in at 90 minutes in length, so she plans to post the numbers that get cut from broadcast on her YouTube page.
But before the show is sent off in spectacular fashion with that concert special, the actual narrative finale will wrap up its characters stories without putting “a total bow on them” said Champlin.
“Aline came up to me when they broke the story for the finale and just said, ‘Paula wins,'” Champlin said. “I asked what she meant, and she said, ‘You’ll see.’ And I was very happy. Paula works hard. She deserves the win.”
Gabrielle Ruiz’ Valencia, who started the series seemingly as a mean girl is now “learning to rethink what marriage is, after having a very specific idea of it from her childhood,” she said.
And Rebecca will make “a life-changing decision about her future.”
“We kind of wanted to play the premise — toy with what would my life look like with these guys?” Bloom said. “Let’s see that. Let’s cut right to the chase.”
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