Songwriters Benj Pasek and Justin Paul achieve EGOT status
The prestigious EGOT club just got two new members: Songwriters Benj Pasek and Justin Paul.
The duo, who have already won an Oscar for “La La Land” and a Tony and Grammy Award for “Dear Evan Hansen,” secured their EGOT with an Emmy win for “Which of the Pickwick Triplets Did It?” from “Only Murders in the Building” (co-written with Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman) won for best song.
Paul said backstage after the win: “It’s obviously exciting and very wild to think about doing this alongside two of our heroes who gave us our very first job in television, which makes it very meaningful.” He continued: “To do this with a collaboration that was one of the most joyful we’ve ever had in our careers on a TV show that is one of our favorite history of television shows, on a show that is so joyful. to work on.” Paul added: ‘What makes it all so new? It’s one of those things where you could say without a doubt: it was great. We had a great time. The show was great. So they’re just remarkable things.”
Speak with Variety for Making a Scene, the show’s co-creator said, “It came to me in the shower. I literally thought, ‘Oh, which one of the Pickwick triplets did it?’” Hoffman recalls. “The officer character, played by Steve in the play, was on a mission to discover which of these little baby triplets could have killed their mother – which is ridiculous, but to me, wonderfully ridiculous.”
When writing the song, Pasek said, “Our job was to try to write something that would be as difficult to sing as possible, and that would really have to go off the tongue and be something very, very difficult to put into one take to do. That works to our advantage in terms of the plot, because the question really is: can this character pull it off? And for several episodes, he can’t. It gives us something to really root for as the season goes on.”
Pasek and Paul became the 20th and 21st members of the elusive group. The EGOT club also includes the likes of Whoopi Goldberg, Viola Davis, Jennifer Hudson, John Legend and more.
