Are you watching Schmigadoon! on Apple TV+? Whether or not you’re a fan of musicals, you owe it to yourself to check out this clever, honest, and utterly charming meta-comedy about the hard work of relationships and the meaning of true love. (You can read our review of the series here!) In this Goggler exclusive, we caught up with two of the residents of Schmigadoon – Dove Cameron, who plays Betsy, and Aaron Tveit, who plays Danny Bailey – for a conversation about how these roles and this series changed them and their view of the world.
Umapagan Ampikaipakan: Schmigadoon!, it’s big, it’s beautiful, and it’s also life affirming. It’s like perfect quarantine content. When something is this immersive, and when it talks about big ideas like true love, it has this indelible impact on the audience. But I’m always curious about how it affects you guys as actors in the show. Does it change your worldview in any way? Does it, I guess, change your view on love or do anything of the sort?
Aaron Tveit: Absolutely. Especially at this time, framed against the world that we find ourselves in, it’s important to remember simplicity and to remember hope and joy. Those are things that maybe we take for granted. And just how comfortable we are in our lives, not knowing that things can just kind of change or be ripped away.
So it’s definitely made me reflect upon that. And we saw it every day on set. I mean, this is very, very impactful. And Keegan’s character is kind of amazing because he’s saying he doesn’t like musicals, and he’s refusing to be part of it, and then the way that it all winds itself around is just very, very emotional. All of us got to experience that emotion together. And so I hope that perpetrates across the screen for everyone watching.
Dove Cameron: I have to thank you for your question. That is just one of the most well phrased, most articulate questions. You were just so right on the money.
UA: My mother would be proud.
DC: Yes, she is, I’m sure.
I mean, it was interesting for a million reasons. You know, as an actor, it was a very human time. We were in the thick of the pandemic, right when it was really terrible. We were incredibly isolated as performers. We couldn’t leave. No one could come to us. We couldn’t see each other. The world was closed. And so, it was a very heightened emotional human time for us as people.
And then, we’re coming to work every day, and working on this project that was like two things. It’s like both very antihuman, because it’s very performative and its very idea is caricature based, but then at the end of it, you realize that we’ve been sneaking you these like emotional vitamins, and that it’s actually a very human story.
Personally, and I haven’t mentioned this, but I was going through a really terrible breakup at the time, and I was just reassessing my life every single day, and spending a lot of time on my own in Canada. And I was thinking all the time, every day, about what love means. What it means to love yourself. I was in a very intense period of growth, and coming to work every day and talking to other humans, being like, what is this? And unpacking it with them. And everybody was really helping me through that.
And the story at the end where basically Cecily and Keegan’s lesson is that they were expecting these things of each other and calling that love, saying: “Hey, this is the list of things that I need you to be, and if you can’t be those things for me, then I don’t love you.” And if you can’t be those things for me, then then I don’t want you. When really, love is about not needing anything from the other person, and divorcing yourself from that, and giving yourself everything, and then showing up exactly as you are. It’s appreciated. It’s what I want. And I choose you because I choose me. And it’s all about that sort of self-love, and acceptance, and human progress, and what that means to love each other and show up for each other in a time that was incredibly isolated for us as actors. So, yeah, Schmigadoon! was very moving and definitely contributed to a lot of my growth at the end of last year and probably who I will be going forward.
UA: Good God, “love is not needing anything from the other person” is going on my Instagram feed. That is beautiful. I love it. Thank you.
DC: Thank you. Thank you so much.
UA: Before I let you go, tell me what it was like to enter the set on day one and what it was like stepping into this world that they created for Schmigadoon!?
AT: It was amazing. You read something like this, that’s kind of so fully realized, and bold, and they’re trying to do something very new, and you have a picture in your mind of what it’s going to look like, and how it’s going to all work together. And when I walked on set the first day – I think we were shooting kind of a piece of the end, actually, where we were waving goodbye to Cecily and Keegan’s characters – and these sets were so fully realized. It’s like you were shooting a movie musical in the 50s. Everything is there. There’s a running stream. There’s dirt there. There’s a bridge. There’s a tree.
So it’s like you have this thing in your head. And then, when you get to set, you can relax and breathe and say, “wow, I don’t need to imagine it.” They did this. These amazing craftsmen built this, and I don’t have to do this part of the work. I just get to play in this world that they’ve they fully created.
DC: My fantasy growing up was always to inhabit other worlds. That’s that same feeling you get when you’re reading books and you want to enter into the world. That was what I thought acting was going to be like. And that was what I really wanted to do. I wanted to become other people and live other lives.
A lot of the time when you walk onto a set as an actor, it’s unbelievably underwhelming. And most of the time, you’re on a strange colored screen, and there’s not a real set. You know what I mean? Like, the job is the job, right? It’s not what it used to be, where everything was very romantic. It’s like, we’re kind of like making it happen, we’re doing it quick, and we know how to make it all happen now rather than doing something like going the extra mile to build these grand sets that are larger than life. Which is fine. And it’s great.
But the opportunity to have something like this had me feeling like strangely emotional every day because it was so clear that the people working on Schmigadoon! were doing it for the love of it, and doing it so that we could make it as big and as best as possible, and not just do it for the sake of doing it. We were doing it because we wanted to make it grand. We wanted to make it romantic. And we wanted the audience to be like, that’s a real stream, and that’s a lot harder, and that’s a lot more fun. So it had me feeling like, “wow, this is what I always wanted to do.” Which was very special.
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