‘Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist’ Creator Is Hopeful for More Holiday Movies After Emmy Nom
variety.comEmily Longeretta One year ago, the team behind NBC’s “Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist” was devastated when the broadcast network pulled the plug on the musical series after two seasons.
At the time, the show’s cast, as well as creator Austin Winsberg, were vocal about how sad they were about the untimely end; after pitching it around and hoping for a pickup, it seemed to be dead in the water.And then the Roku Channel came around and offered a chance to wrap it up in the shape of a movie; the two-hour holiday pic focused on the Clarke family’s first Christmas without patriarch Mitch (Peter Gallagher), who died at the end of the first season.“We had ended Season 2 on a massive cliffhanger, but we had many new stories we still wanted to tell,” says Winsberg. “To be able to create a resolution, give the fans clarity and live with these characters one more time meant everything to me.” Little did he know, his characters would not only get to wrap up their story, but they’d also be elevated by their Roku movie in the shape of two Emmy noms — one for TV movie and the other for choreography.
But it took a lot of work to get there.“It was certainly a challenging assignment,” he says. “It was important to make the movie feel accessible so that audiences that may not have seen the original show could also enjoy it.
At the same time, we knew there were several loose threads that needed to be addressed through a structure that felt authentic for a movie and not just like two big episodes of the show.”With an extremely tight turnaround — the movie aired within six months of the show’s cancelation — “it was a thin needle to thread very, very quickly,” Winsberg says.In the TV movie category, “Zoey’s” isn’t the only nominee that features.
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