THE IRRATIONAL: Jesse L. Martin and Karen David Preview the Season 2 Musical Episode

THE IRRATIONAL stages a quasi-musical hour in the Tuesday, March 18 episode, “Suddenly Alec”…but despite having Broadway vet Jesse L. Martin and singer-actress Karen David in the cast, it almost didn’t happen.

“When I started playing this role…I very specifically said that I wasn’t going to sing,” Martin, who plays professor of behavioral science Alec Mercer, tells Give Me My Remote in the video below. “I just thought, look, yes, I know the world knows me as Jesse L. Martin, who can sing and has…but it doesn’t mean that every role I play ever is a singing role.”

The shift came by accident, as Martin and David, who plays Rose (a fixer/former MI-6 agent and Alec’s girlfriend), “were fantasizing about cases that both of our characters would get involved in,” Martin recalls. “And because we both love theater, we both fantasized about this notion of infiltrating a small community theater, but thinking that we do something like Shakespeare…or something classic that we can get the rights to. No part of me thought musical at all.”

“So much happens with Jesse and I when we’re in the makeup chair, where we could just banter in the early hours of the morning and throw ideas at each other,” David adds. “It’s like throwing spaghetti on the wall and seeing what sticks.” 

The duo mentioned it to showrunner Arika Lisanne Mittman, Martin shares, who “took it quite seriously.” 

“We were just suggesting, but she took it quite seriously,” Martin says. “And suddenly she came back with the notion of, ‘How do you feel about singing, because it could be a musical.’ Now, I don’t know if she was doing that very slyly, like she had a long game of finally getting this musical…but whatever happened it worked.” 

“And all I could say at that point is, ‘Look, I still feel the same way about singing, at least as Alec Mercer, but if it was going to happen, it has to happen in a way that it’s entirely an accident, where I was not planning on being that guy at all,’” he continues. “And that’s what was created.”

In the hour, Alec and Rose go undercover after a community theater actor is murdered during LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS. While David (who previously starred in the delightful musical TV series GALAVANT) sang during a karaoke scene earlier in the season, she admitted the team was hoping there might be more music in store for the show.

“Well, I knew that we all, myself included, really, really, really wanted Jesse to sing,” David says. “But I totally understand where Jesse’s coming from because I get asked a lot to sing for different roles that I play. And it just so happened that it made sense to the storyline…selfishly, we all wanted to hear Jesse’s glorious voice.”

David was “gleeful and joyful” over just knowing Martin would be singing. But then she learned there was another twist. “The surprise for me, really, was that I got to sing and perform with Jesse—I wasn’t expecting that,” she says. “So, that truly was a surprise.”

But before the duo get the chance, Rose is busy in her undercover task as a member of the theater’s crew. As viewers learn in the episode, Rose was “a theater darling and went to drama college, and it makes complete sense,” David points out. “She’s used to putting on disguises, playing different roles for different cases. So why should this be any different?” 

But even though Rose isn’t cast in the play during her undercover assignment, she’s still overjoyed to be helping her boyfriend with his task. “She’s completely living vicariously through Alec and the adventure that he’s about to embark upon, even though he’s absolutely petrified,” David previews. “It just makes the whole coaching scene session so exciting for Rose. To see her in her element—this is a place that she knows and loves and doesn’t have the opportunity to do as much. So the fact that Alec gets to do it, she’s just tickled pink about it.”

THE IRRATIONAL, Tuesdays, 10/9c, NBC

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