A core musical moment in Sean Anders’ Apple TV+ “Christmas Carol” riff “Spirited” involves Ryan Reynolds and Will Ferrell repeatedly hurling the same insult at strangers set to song and dance in Dickensian London, and as it turns out, the whole thing was Reynolds’ idea.
“When Ryan Reynolds has an idea, you kind of just say like, ‘how do we make it happen?’ He has an okay, track record,” songwriter Justin Paul, who collaborated on the big musical number “Good Afternoon” with frequent writing partner Benj Pasek as well as Mark Sonnenblick, Sukari Jones and Khiyon Hursey, told TheWrap. “It was this sort of very straightforward concept, that was this is a vulgar, obscene insult in the world of Dickensian England that needs to become a song.”
In the words of Will Ferrell’s character ‘Present,” back in the old days “Good Afternoon” was a sick burn. In fact, Present’s mortal self used the phrase as his go-to dismissal of anyone and everyone in his miserable days of pinching pennies.
“Even though it’s a big production number, it still has to have some dramatic purpose, and what I love about ‘Spirited’ is that all the songs are very musical theater and embracing the form of musical theater in that they don’t just exist just to have a song, they’re doing something,” Pasek said. “Even if it’s a song that’s allowing you to have fun, it still [has] a direct narrative of Ryan’s character trying to cheer Will’s character up. The fact that we have this twist, that he was actually Scrooge, meant that there was a direction that Ryan had to go in to try to cheer him up and to try to get them out of this really, really sad place and hence, the song is having some sort of narrative function that is beyond just something silly.”
Pasek added matter-of-factly, “I don’t think that we could have had [it] without that plot twist.”
The crowning comedic and chaotic number features hot air balloons, a man on fire, a bomb explosion that destroys a building, tap dancing from both Ferrell and Reynolds, an Oliver Twist Easter egg and a cameo from the one and only Judi Dench.
“We did a little [historical research] but we also had the great fortune that the characters themselves are sort of like finding themselves in a world — that particularly Ryan who leads the song, he’s never been there so the rules kind of go out the window and then anybody that he makes up will sort of appear in our magical world that we’ve created,” Pasek added.
“Of course we do have our own references whether it be the Leslie Bricusse stuff or the Mary Poppins stuff, the Oliver Twist stuff you know the musical stuff, but it also is just a very free world where we could make up things. The song itself is like an evil Mary Poppins sort of take.”
In addition to the three-page song that came out of a 45-page brainstorm document, the team of five writers also collaborated on songs like “The View From Here” and “Story of Your Life,” which first haunts Reynolds’ character Clint Briggs through the deep voice of Jacob Marley (Patrick Page), but later gets reprised by Reynolds when Briggs sings a more hopeful rendition to Ferrell’s Scrooge/Present.
“It’s sort of like the sixth grade thesis statement that you would write where you can keep returning to it and like writing different things and then it keeps going back to that thesis statement,” Pasek said of reprises. “You can find a really good hook and you can change meaning later on. It’s always an exciting thing as a musical theater writer. This team nailed it with ‘The View From Here’ as a title and also ‘Story of Your Life’ can change meaning.”
Collaborator Khiyon Hursey appreciates the classic musical theater element of a reprise mixed with the starpower of the actors who took on “Spirited” with less of a traditional theatrical background.
“We don’t get to see [reprises] all the time in movie musicals so I think that that’s something really fun and unique about this one, where we’re using really classic musical theater songwriting,” he told TheWrap. “The mesh of that, it resulted in something that feels familiar for everyone who loves musical theater, but also Will, Ryan, Octavia and Hollywood and superstardom and having the superstars enter the musical theater tradition, especially with those reprises, it’s super cool to be a part of that and to see them do super well.”
Mark Sonnenblick
Sukari Jones spearheded “The View From Here,” sung first by Octavia Spencer’s character Kimberly, who works for Briggs’ company that works to stir up outrage for money. The soaring ballad has two reprises later on throughout the film.
“The songs changed meaning for the characters in terms of the arcs and where we see them in the show, but they also change meaning for people who heretofore had no opportunities to be seen or heard in musical theater,” she said. “What you may or may not know is before this, I was kind of dumped by a collaborator, dumped by an agent, thinking there’s no room in musical theater for a Black girl to exist because it’s not really populated by us. You kind of wonder, if there’s no one else, is there even a way for you to dream?”
Jones also detailed the experience of seeing Pasek and Paul affirm her work and recruit her to the project before describing more in depth how she personally relates to the song.
“The cherry on top [was] just working on a song, specifically with ‘The View From Here’ with a character that we both have the same window into life and point of view as someone who’s kind of trapped in a clear box however many floors above the city that she doesn’t get to actually participate in,” Jones continued. “And getting to write really character-based songs from the inside out, and then have that be something that gets to continue and we just see the character go from really being in a shell to kind of expanding more and believing in herself and loving herself, and the freedom kind of mirrors my own journey in life.”
When it comes to “Good Afternoon,” Jones says joy is underrated.
“Sometimes I feel like joy has become uncool, like in a world of cynicism, where there are so many things that are serious happening and so many things to take seriously, that we feel like we can’t stop for a moment of pure delight,” she said. “I think that joy is and always has been in style, and it’s so great to get to work on a song like ‘Good Afternoon’ where it does the thing you’ll always hope that will happen in a musical where it’ll just be a moment larger than just speaking, larger than just standing that literally erupts into song and dance and extravaganza.”
Pasek echoed her sentiment, adding that the song thrives most within its magical, musical, made-up story.
“What a wonderful thing too that ‘Spirited’ is such a capital M musical that the lyrics are so specific to the plot that you can’t take a song like ‘Good Afternoon’ and throw it on the radio,” he said. “It is so essentially within the context of this plot, and that’s where it should live and and and only live. That is a really fun thing for us to get to, like really find that specificity again, and that’s why ‘Spirited’ was such a joy.”
“Spirited” is now streaming exclusively on Apple TV+.
