Songwriters Benj Pasek and Justin Paul Achieve EGOT Status With Emmys Win
The prestigious EGOT club just gained two new members: Songwriters Benj Pasek and Justin Paul.
The duo, who already have an Oscar for “La La Land” and a Tony and Grammy award for “Dear Evan Hansen” and “The Greatest Showman,” secured their EGOT (the home run of winning an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony award) with their Emmy win for best song for “Which of the Pickwick Triplets Did It?” from “Only Murders in the Building.” Pasek and Paul co-wrote the song with Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman.
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Speaking backstage after the win, Paul said, “It’s obviously thrilling and very wild to think about getting to do it alongside two of our heroes who gave us our very first job in television –makes it most meaningful.”
For Paul, the collaboration on “Only Murders” was “one of the most joyful that we’ve ever had in our careers on a TV show that is one of our favorites in the history of television shows,” he said. “We had a wonderful time. The show was wonderful.”
Speaking with Variety for Making a Scene, “Only Murders” co-creator John Hoffman said the idea for the storyline that inspired the song “came to me in the shower. I literally just thought, ‘Oh, which of the Pickwick triplets did it?’” Hoffman recalls. “The constable character was on a mission to uncover which of these little baby triplets could have killed their mother — which is preposterous, but delightfully preposterous in my mind.”
Pasek said the assignment was nothing less than to “write something that is as difficult to sing as possible” and something that is really, really hard to do in one take. That works to our advantage in terms of the plot, because really the question is, can this character pull it off? And for several episodes, he can’t. It gives us something to really root for over the course of the season,’ Pasek said.
Pasek and Paul become the 20th and 21st members of the elusive EGOT club. The list of those who qualify includes the likes of Whoopi Goldberg, Viola Davis, Jennifer Hudson, John Legend and more.
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