How 'The Pickwick Triplets' became a major earworm for “Only Murders in the Building”

"Look at me, I'm doing it," co-songwriter Marc Shaiman says of star Steve Martin's reaction while filming the tongue-twister of a musical number.

The biggest musical theater earworm of the year isn't from a Broadway musical or even a film adaptation...it's from a Hulu mystery series.

On season 3 of Only Murders in the Building, Mabel (Selena Gomez), Oliver (Martin Short), and Charles (Steve Martin) found themselves in the world of New York theater, struggling to solve the mystery of the death of their leading man (Paul Rudd), while mounting a musical, Death Rattle Dazzle. Charles, in particular, must rise to the challenge of nailing a challenging patter song, "Which of the Pickwick Triplets Did It?"

The song is threaded through several episodes as Charles tries to learn the song, is temporarily replaced by Matthew Broderick, and at last, delivers a stellar performance of it at the show's "sitzprobe," a.k.a. the first rehearsal with a full orchestra.

The musical may not be real, but its composers are some of the brightest names in musical theater. Inimitable duo Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman (Hairspray, Catch Me If You Can, Mary Poppins Returns) teamed up with Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (Dear Evan Hansen, The Greatest Showman) to craft the epic tongue twister and its irrepressible ditty.

Pasek and Paul signed on to the project first and recruited Shaiman and Wittman to write the number alongside them. For Pasek and Paul, landing a job writing for Only Murders was a dream come true and the stuff of pure Hollywood luck. While on vacation, they ran into a friend from college, Sas Goldberg, who was about to start work on season 3 of the Hulu series.

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"I said something to the effect of, 'That is Justin and my's favorite show on television,'" Pasek recalls to Entertainment Weekly. "'If there's ever an opportunity for us to do anything having to do with Only Murders in the Building — write a ditty, write a song, write anything — please. We will do it for free.'"

About a week later, Goldberg called up Pasek and Paul to tell them season 3 was going to be built around a musical — and they signed on immediately. From there, they recruited many of their fellow musical composers to help put together the score for the fictional musical. For the patter song, they turned to Wittman and Shaiman, who they credit with launching their television careers by choosing them to write music for season 2 of Smash. Paul also borrowed Shaiman's car while he was living in Los Angeles working on what would become The Greatest Showman.

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In spite of that warm history, Only Murders marks the first time the two writing teams have collaborated on a project. Pasek and Paul came to Shaiman with much of the remit in hand from John Hoffman and the writing team's scripts.

"They said they wanted a fast-paced patter song for Steve," says Wittman. "John Hoffman had a very specific story in mind for the musical, and he wanted a number about these triplets."

A patter song is a classic style of musical theater number, but it wasn't necessarily something that was in Pasek and Paul's more contemporary wheelhouse. "Getting to write something that felt like it was really from a classic musical theater genre and leaning into our musical theater nerd roots was so fun," says Pasek. "We were really aided and abetted by the writers. They set this song up to be dramatically woven throughout the season. So, there was the assignment that in episode 8, he needs to deliver this really complex patter song full of alliteration and plosives and tongue-twisty rhymes. That gives us a flashlight and a roadmap to say, 'Okay, well, we need to build something that's going to make sense in that context.' We knew that the song had to be really, really difficult to sing so that when he does accomplish it, it feels like a momentous achievement for the character."

Another point in their favor was knowing from the word go that it would be Martin performing the number. Shaiman and Wittman had worked with Short extensively in the past, and they had first-hand experience of Martin's gift for delivering patter songs. At one of Short's Christmas parties, they watched Martin deliver the opening number from The Music Man, "Rock Island," the gold standard for patter songs. Martin sang the entire thing himself, even though the number was written for several performers.

For Pasek and Paul, writing for Martin was both an honor and a challenge. "We knew that he's a real musician and a composer and songwriter himself, so we knew he could probably pull it all off," says Paul. "That made us feel entitled to make it difficult and challenging. But it also is daunting because it's like, 'Okay, he's one of the most talented performers of our era, so we need to make something that's worthy of him as a musician, performer, singer, and comedian."

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Typically, musical numbers are written by a duo, one focusing on the lyrics while the other handles the music. But here, given the quartet are lyricists and composers, it led to zany brainstorming sessions where they came up with the most outlandish rhymes and lyrical tongue-twisters.

"It turned out to be a party," says Shaiman. "We all were finishing each other's sentences and lobbing the ball back and forth, and whichever was the funniest or the cleverest or the best alliteration we could come up with, everyone would yell, 'That's it!' and we would move on. There was no ego about it."

"We had the idea of the Pickwick Triplets, and 'Which one of the Pickwick triplets did it?' was suggested in some of the scripts," says Pasek. "We thought that could be a great hook phrase. Then, you begin to reverse engineer it, and you're basically putting together a crossword puzzle. The way that I would honestly describe it is four people in a room trying to figure out the Sunday crossword together."

Adds Paul: "We were finding rhymes that are the cross-section in the Venn diagram of murder and children and babies. What are all the rhymes that could possibly have to do with a crime or inquisition? What are all the ways we want to mention that there's three of them, whether it's the third degree, whether it's the triptych? 'Okay, triptych and apocalyptic!'"

The four all worked in a shared Google doc, tossing in ideas for rhymes and lyrics as they came to them and watching the more internal aspects of the creative process happen in real time.

Shaiman credits Paul with devising the catchy main melody line that recurs with the titular question. "I was at the piano and then he was at a second keyboard in my studio," Shaiman recalls. "He is the one who first went, [playing the piano], 'Which of the Pickwick Triplets did it?' We had the lyric and the rhythm, but I have to tip my hat to Justin for that one measure that then informed everything else."

From there, it became like building Legos, as Pasek describes it, putting one brick atop another, sometimes reviewing a few and reconstructing. "Some songs are really written to be a big, open, memorable chorus," reflects Paul. "But this one was really lyrically motivated. There's such a rhythm and a melody built into the DNA of the lyric. They came together in a way that wasn't intentional. But it just felt like this is how it should sound."

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They did make one change at Martin's request. The lyric which goes, "Will a baby get tried for matricide?" previously asked, "Will a baby get fried for matricide?"

"He was like, 'I don't want to conjure that image of an infant in the electric chair.'" Paul recalls.

With the music and lyrics finalized, all that remained was the moment of truth: Martin performing the entire number for episode 8 of the series, "Sitzprobe." Wittman was there to observe the filming, and there was as much anticipation and tension on the set over whether Martin would pull it off as there is in the show. Particularly because, on the day in question, they were running behind schedule.

"The pressure cooker of Steve Martin literally having to get it right, everyone was very, very nervous," says Pasek. "They thought they were going to have to go into overtime, and he pulled it off beautifully."

According to Wittman, the entire cast, including Short and Meryl Streep, stayed even after they were wrapped to watch Martin's big moment. "Everyone watching his performance, that was for real," Wittman says. "After watching him film all the scenes where he was fumbling it, it was great to see him pull it off. He was quite at home up there."

He didn't merely pull it off; he nailed it in two takes. "I didn't necessarily expect him to have that kind of joyous, 'Look at me, I'm doing it' kind of feeling," adds Shaiman. "That came across in the filming where he is, even at one point flapping his arms like a bird."

The performance captured on screen is imitable, but might Death Rattle Dazzle have a life beyond Only Murders? Specifically one on the Great White Way? It wouldn't be a first for Shaiman and Wittman, who have been developing Bombshell, the musical within the series on Smash, for a 2024-2045 season bow. But the quartet still thinks it's unlikely.

"It's so specifically bizarre for the television show and those characters that I can't imagine it," says Shaiman. "But stranger things have happened."

But if someone has an idea for how to make it work, Pasek is all ears. "It's written so specifically to be in the world of Only Murders in the Building, and the absurdist tone is something only Oliver Putnam could create," he reflects. "But I would love to see if there was some way that the world of Only Murders and this musical could end up doing something. It would need a really creative take. And if there's anyone out there who has one, let us know."

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.