ZOEY’S EXTRAORDINARY PLAYLIST: Jane Levy and Austin Winsberg Tease Jane’s Very Musical ‘Glitch’

On the Sunday, March 29 episode of ZOEY’S EXTRAORDINARY PLAYLIST, Zoey (Jane Levy)—reeling from bad news—discovers a horrifying glitch in her powers: she’s now the one singing. The result? One of the best episodes of the year so far.

“I always wanted to make sure that Jane could sing in the show,” creator Austin Winsberg explains. “It was important to figure out how to make that happen—the ways in which we could have Zoey also singing and expressing her internal thoughts, so that it’s not all her just watching other people do it all the time.”

While filming the pilot Winsberg came up with the rough concept for the powers going awry. “But instead of it just being internal, and only she’s the one who knows it, she actually expresses all her thoughts to the world,” Winsberg teases. “And so everybody can hear what she’s thinking. And I thought it was a good opportunity not only to showcase what Jane can do, but I always like it when a TV show has one episode per season, at least, that just feels different than everything else that they do.”

The creator quickly looped in Levy, who was instantly game. “I was always really excited about it,” she says. “Being the straight man in a musical and watching everyone else get to dance around, I was jealous!”

But while the other cast had their turns singing, no one had ever shouldered quite as much as Levy was tasked with in “Zoey’s Extraordinary Glitch.”

“I was really scared, because it takes a lot of preparation to sing and dance six numbers,” Levy admits. “Most cast members get one per episode, if that, and you get two, maybe more, dance rehearsals, and then you have to have time to go into the recording studio. Not to mention time to even learn the songs and practicing them before you go to the recording studio. So for me to prep all of that while shooting the series in which I’m in almost every single scene was a really daunting task and it caused a couple nervous breakdowns.”

To accommodate the needed rehearsal time, the show paused production for three days so Levy could do a crash rehearsal with choreographer Mandy Moore and her team. Levy would also practice and record the songs when she had the rare time off of work and on weekends.

“Dancing is something that I find to be easier [than singing],” Levy admits. ”I just enjoy it more. I’m able to be less hard on myself for some reason. With singing, I just want to be really good at it. I feel like I’m like not and I’m always beating myself up and trying to figure out a way to relax.”

“For singing I would ask for for tips and tricks from [co-stars] Skylar [Astin], Alex [Newell] and Michael Thomas Grant, and they would help me,” she continues. “There’s so many things you can do that make a difference. Alex was like you should smile when you’re singing some of these numbers; it makes your voice sound differently. Skylar would be like, ‘This is what actually makes your voice sound great when you sing like this.’ Eventually, I was just like, all I care about is being a good actor and singing is just one form of expression. So I [ended up] caring less about exactly how my voice sounded and more about expressing what Zoey was going through.”

While picking songs for each episode is always important, it’s a rarity that the writers got to utilize Levy’s talents. So for this special episode, “I knew that I wanted there to be one song associated with like the high-stakes work story,” Winsberg previews. “I knew that I wanted to do a couple songs that had to do with the love triangle. And I knew that I wanted there to be a song having to do with that what she was going through with her father. And then I think it was just about what was the first song that got us into this and that was ‘Crazy.’ It was a song I’ve wanted to use since back in the pilot. I just thought it was the perfect embodiment of the way that Zoey is feeling.“

Even outside of Levy singing, the stakes “felt like a high concept comedy,” Winsberg says. “We referenced the movie LIAR, LIAR early in the episode and that’s intentional. There’s a lot of those movies back in the day where you make a wish, one day, and everything goes wrong or everything changes. I like doing something in that vein.”

The timing of the episode also allowed the writers “to change all the dynamics,” Winsberg teases. “And once Zoey’s feelings are put out there, what ramifications does that have for everything to come? It was a good pivot point to be able to change stories and go to new story places when maybe Zoey isn’t even aware of some of the ways in which she’s feeling—and yet she just put it out in the world. And so now that it’s out in the world, how do these people deal with the ramifications of what she just said?”

But as things spiral on-screen, off-screen, the team is delighted with the end result. “This episode is the most proud I have been of anything I’ve ever made,“ Levy shares.

ZOEY’S EXTRAORDINARY PLAYLIST, Sundays, 9/8c, NBC

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