Schmigadoon! Season 2: How Jane Krakowski Prepped For That Flying Trapeze Scene
The second season of Apple TV+'s "Schmigadoon!" came with its own set of challenges, distinctly different from those of Season 1. From the sound of it, Jane Krakowski knows this quite well. Her character in this season is the showboating defense attorney attempting to clear Josh (Keegan-Michael Key) of a murder rap, a direct parody of Billy Flynn in the musical "Chicago." But as Flynn literally tap-dances his client out of a jam in the original musical, then parodying this, taking it to an even more absurd degree, required a bit more from Bobby Flanagan. As we see in Episode 3, Bobby literally goes on the trapeze in the courtroom to razzle-dazzle the jury.
How exactly that trapeze got into the courtroom in the first place isn't really relevant in the city of Schmicago. But what is relevant is that Krakowski had never actually been on a trapeze. While the number isn't really meant to be all that realistic, Krakowski still felt that she should try to at least learn the basics.
"I had never done trapeze before," Krakowski told Pride. "So I went to some lessons and tried to pick up as much as I could in the time that I had before we had to film it to see what I could learn to do."
The scene was one of Krakowski's favorite filming days
Jane Krakowski also said that "Schmigadoon!" is rehearsed and filmed very much like a stage musical, with the same quick pace to get everything up on its feet and into performance. This means that, even in the case of performances that require a great amount of choreography or other physical demands, even in the most over-the-top cases, there isn't much time to get it perfect.
"I felt nervous doing it for the first time for everybody," said Krakowski, "because all of my cast mates are in the jury and in the courtroom themselves as their characters." She also said that putting in her best performance was, to her, simply a matter of holding up her end of the bargain, making sure that the rest of the cast was able to match her with their best. It sounds challenging, but it also sounds like it paid off, at least in Krakowski's view.
"To be honest with you — and I don't say this very often — it was one of my favorite days of filming in my career," continued Krakowski. " I had such a joy of making that number with [choreographer Christopher Gattelli]. And then getting to perform it for Cinco [Paul, creator and showrunner] and the cameras and everybody who was in the room there. It was one of those magical days."