How Steven Levenson & Joel Fields Brought All That Jazz To ‘Fosse/Verdon’ – Crew Call Podcast

If there’s ever a story in this zeitgeist of Time’s Up, it’s the tale of Broadway and film star Gwen Verdon, and her power behind legendary choreographer and film/stage director Bob Fosse — and the credit she rarely received. As portrayed in FX’s limited series Fosse/Verdon, The Damn Yankees actress (played by multi-Oscar nominee Michelle Williams) was the nuance and the grace behind all of Fosse’s signature knees-in, hips-out dance moves as seen in the eight-time Oscar winning Cabaret and the Tony-winning Pippin, not to mention his inspiration and grounding force as well.

On today’s Crew Call, Fosse/Verdon co-creator Steven Levenson, the Tony-winning writer of Broadway hit musical Dear Evan Hanson, and EP Joel Fields, Emmy-winning writer of The Americans, take us on their journey of bringing the tormented love story of these two entertainers to life. One sublime oasis on Fosse/Verdon is the episode “Glory” in which the series writers reflect Fosse’s pain via Stephen Schwartz’s Pippin songs. Even though Fosse/Verdon is a story ripe for now, there was another facet of Fosse which intrigued Levenson and Fields: How an extremely successful entertainer, who in the course of a year won an Oscar, a Tony and an Emmy (a record that no one else has emulated or beat), fell to pieces months later.