Tony-Nommed Songwriting Team Matthew Sklar and Chad Beguelin on Not Fighting for 25 Years, Making The Prom Movie & More

Composer Matthew Sklar and scribe Chad Beguelin have been collaborators for over 25 years, and now they're Tony-nominated for creating The Prom, which earned seven Tony Award nominations, including Best Musical. "We're happily exhausted," Sklar said to Paul Wontorek during an interview on Broadway.com's #LiveAtFive. "There's so much going on but were having the best time. We set out to write this musical comedy, and along the way found this story with a heart. To start anything with a blank page and have it be nominated for Tony Awards, nothing can beat it."

The duo may have never "had a fight or fought with each other," but they did have Broadway dreams before meeting. "I was the Jester in Once Upon a Mattress in school," Beguelin said. "I was crushed that I wasn’t [Prince] Dauntless but I moved on. Fiddler on the Roof was my first piece of community theater." As for Sklar, music has always held a special place in his heart. "I come from the pit," he said. "I got very lucky and got a job subbing keyboards at Les Misérables on Broadway when I was a freshman at NYU. From that I started working on Miss Saigon, and then the Guys and Dolls revival with Nathan Lane. I just loved being part of the theater."

The Prom made its world premiere at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta in 2016 and has changed a lot along the way. "In Atlanta, the show was a lot more insidery," Beguelin said. "We needed to change lines and lyrics to make sure it was accessible to not just Broadway fans while still keeping the flavor." Sklar credits the musical's success to the collaborative nature of the creative team. "One thing I find special about this show is that [director/choreographer] Casey [Nicholaw], [co-writer] Bob [Martin], Chad and I were all on it since day one together," he said. "We've never made a move without each other; we’re always on the same page. I think that’s one of the reasons why it works so well."

It was recently announced that Emmy-winning producer and director Ryan Murphy would be turning The Prom into a movie, and Sklar and Beguelin gave some inside information about how the process is going: "Ryan [Murphy] met with our producer Bill Damaschke after he saw the show," Sklar said. "Bill called and said he had a great meeting with Ryan and that he wants to do something with the show and needs to figure out what it is. A few weeks later, we found out that he wanted to make it a feature film in a major way." With the story being told on screen, there is room for a lot of changes to be made. "We're working on the screenplay and opening it up because now we can," Beguelin said. "We can show them on the bus, we can show her grandmother, we can show Emma's parents. We can make it more cinematic, and we’ll have more time to go deeper into the characters because it’s a different art form."

Be sure to see The Prom, now playing at the Longacre Theatre.

Watch the full #LiveAtFive episode below!