Ryan Murphy Has A New Musical Show In The Works With Ben Platt & Barbra Streisand & OMG
Sports fans had their big day on Sunday, but Monday was for the musical theater kids. Deadline revealed that Netflix picked up a new musical comedy series from Ryan Murphy that will star the buzziest name on Broadway right now: Dear Evan Hansen star Ben Platt. Oh, and theater legend Barbra Streisand is also in talks, and Gwyneth Paltrow, too! Get the lowdown on the new series here, like when does The Politician premiere and what you can expect from the new Netflix show.
Glee fans will be super excited to know that Ryan Murphy's new series, called The Politician, will be the creator's second foray into musical dramedies. The details on the new show are still being kept quiet for the most part, but early reports say that Ben Platt has several musical numbers in the series. The show will reportedly follow Platt's character, a wealthy Santa Barbara native named Payton, who is climbing the political ladder and will run for a different public office each season. The series is being billed as a one-hour comedy that will also deal in social commentary. The show has already been picked up for two seasons by Netflix following an intense bidding war among all the major streaming services, so it is clearly already a big deal.
Ben Platt took to Instagram after the announcement to share his excitement and disbelief over the new project, writing that headline feels like "a photoshop from [his] fantasies."
Even more exciting: Barbra Streisand and Gwyneth Paltrow are in talks to star in The Politician as well. Paltrow is engaged to Ryan Murphy's creative partner and The Politician's co-creator Brad Falchuck, and she also recurred on the pair's first musical TV show Glee from 2010 to 2014. Paltrow even took home an Emmy for her role as Holly Holliday on Glee in 2011. With such a close connection to the creators, it sounds like Paltrow is pretty much a lock for The Politician, I would say.
The more interesting bit of news is that Barbra Streisand may join the cast of the new show, which would mark the theater legend's first regular role on a TV series. Streisand is apparently also in talks to produce the series and direct some of the episodes along with her acting gig, so it sounds like she is pretty interested in the series. She has recently worked with Netflix on her 2017 documentary, Barbra: The Music... The Mem'ries... The Magic!. We'll have to wait and see how the negotiations work out and hope Streisand ends up in the cast of The Politician.
As for when we can expect to start streaming The Politician on Netflix, it will probably be a bit of a wait. The show is obviously still in working through its casting phase, and is reportedly looking to begin production towards the end of the summer. That means we most likely won't be seeing the show until sometime in 2019.
The Politician's pickup by Netflix follows the streaming service picking up another Ryan Murphy series a few months ago. Back in September, Netflix bought Murphy's upcoming series Ratched, an origin series about the One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest villain Nurse Ratched that is slated to premiere later this year. That will star Murphy's frequent collaborator Sarah Paulson in the title role of Nurse Ratched, and it marked the showrunner's first streaming series. Now, he has two streaming series in the works, and The Politician seems to confirm that Murphy is siding with Netflix amidst our current streaming wars.
Be on the lookout for The Politician to land on Netflix towards the end of 2018 or the start of 2019.
