Get Ready for Galavant

Get Ready for Galavant

It seems like it was ages ago that I attended my second press trip with Disney that included ABC Television.  Last November we had the opportunity to preview two episodes of the new musical comedy Galavant coming to ABC Television tonight (January 4th, 2015).  After we watched the episodes we chatted with show producer Dan Fogelman, musical composer Alan Menken, lyricist Glen Slater and show star and mega hottie Joshua Sasse.  I attended an all expenses paid trip to LA from Disney and ABC Television, any opinions expressed are my own.

We sat down for lunch after our morning of black.ish events and started to preview the first two episodes of the show Galavant.  Not knowing anything really in dept about the show none of us knew what to expect.  We started eating and watching the show and almost immediately I could feel the smile starting to stretch across my face.  According to show producer Dan Fogelman, Galavant would appeal to fans of Monty  Python, Princess Bride and Game of Thrones.  I love Game of Thrones and I’ve seen Princess Bride quite a few times, my husband still quotes lines from that movie, so I had high expectations.  The show is filmed on location in England and the imagery is absolutely beautiful.  It was a great decision to go that route instead of using a studio lot.  Fans of any sort of musical shows will find Galavant entertaining and delightful, I certainly did.  I loved all the medieval themes all through out the show.  If you’re thinking about watching Galavant with the kids I will note that there is some adult humor in the show, however show creators feel they did a great job hiding those jokes so kids don’t understand.  Fogelman said he feels they would go over the kids heads but the parents would totally get it.

 

While the pilot has the least amount of music, Glenn Slater and Alan Menken have written 33 songs for the eight episode series.  There are 24 songs and with reprises it totals 33 songs, they even threw out quite a few songs that didn’t work for the show.  That’s a lot of music, Alan joked that their hands were tired after writing all the songs but really he’s probably written tons more for other projects.  Galavant was born out of a script that Dan Fogelman created and he wanted to turn it into a musical.  He had worked with Alan Menken and Glenn Slater on Tangled, while he was working on “The Neighbors” Glenn and Alan came in to work on a musical episode with him.  He said at the time the show wasn’t getting much attention but after that episode, Alan received an Emmy nomination for the episode and they started to get more attention.  That’s when he approached them about his script, shortly after Glen and Alan came up with the show’s original theme song and Galavant was born.

There’s a lot of star power expected to show up on Galavant.  While Joshua Sasse is an up and coming star in the US, he’s be doing musicals in England and I’m sure he’ll be an instant hit here in the US.  Along with Joshua there’s Karen David and Luke Youngblood, both are also up and coming stars.  According to Dan Fogelman there will be lots of other stars appearing on the show.  The king and rival to Galavant is Timothy Omundson, you probably know him from Psych.  Weird Al  Yankovic is slated to appear on the show, Ricky Gervais, Hugh Bonneville and John Stamos makes an appearance as a rival to Galavant in the second episode of the series which airs tonight on ABC.  Check out a clip of Galavant below.

As a part of the interview we also had the opportunity to meet Galavant in person.  Dan introduced him as a surprise for us mommy bloggers and something for us to look at.  I laugh now because he walked in and we all cheered.  I could look at him forever (I’m married, not dead).  I honestly don’t remember half of what he said (thank goodness for recordings) because I loved his accent. I have an accent and I usually get people asking me about mine so it was nice listening to Joshua talk.  I honestly think he has the whole hottie star thing down.  I swore he was winking at us.  Or maybe I imagined it.  LOL – either way I’m sure he’s be lots of women’s Man Crush Monday posts tomorrow.

About Galavant:

Screenwriter/executive producer Dan Fogelman (Crazy, Stupid, Love, Tangled, Cars) teams up with Broadway and Hollywood award-winning musical team — composer Alan Menken (The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast) and lyricist Glenn Slater (Tangled) — for a 4-week comedy extravaganza. Once upon a time, the dashing hero, Galavant (Joshua Sasse) lost the love of his life, Madalena (Mallory Jansen), to the evil King Richard (Timothy Omundson). Now, our fallen hero is ready to take revenge and restore his “happily ever after.” But it won’t be without a few twists and turns along the way.

Galavant stars Joshua Sasse as Galavant, Timothy Omundson as King Richard, Vinnie Jones as Gareth, Mallory Jansen as Madalena, Karen David as Isabella and Luke Youngblood as Sid.

Make sure you tune in every Sunday in January for Galavant, each week you can enjoy two episodes for the 8 part musical comedy series.  Galavant airs at 8 PM ET/PT on ABC.  Follow along on social media to be up to date on all things Galavant.

Galavant FB page and/or are following at https://twitter.com/GalavantABC ‪#‎Galavant‬, and here are more social handles to follow for the show, which premieres on Jan 4 (tonight)!
http://instagram.com/GalavantABC
http://galavantabc.tumblr.com
https://plus.google.com/+GalavantABC/posts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDRL6iuFfFQ

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• New ABC TV Comedy Extravaganza Galavant Premieres January 4 – #ABCTVEVENT (5minutesformom.com)
• GALAVANT Review: ABC’s Madcap Midseason Musical (collider.com)
• 5 Reasons You Should Watch ABC’s Medieval Musical Comedy Galavant (tvguide.com)
• ‘Galavant’ stars say show brings music, laughs with medieval twist (abc7.com)