The Musical’ Premieres On Roku Giving Fans The Best Seat In The House

Having directed the show in Los Angeles, New York, and London, few people know Heathers: The Musical as well as Andy Fickman.

The award-winning smash hit has come a long way since first being staged almost a decade ago, and now the stage captured (which means it was filmed on stage) TV movie of the show is premiering on The Roku Channel.

I caught up with Fickman to discuss the latest incarnation of his vision inspired by the 1988 movie, which starred Winona Ryder and Christian Slater, and why it’s a milestone in the project’s evolution.

Simon Thompson: Many people shy away from musicals as a genre, but something about you draws you to them. What do you see as an opportunity that others see as an albatross or a nightmare?

Andy Fickman: (Laughs) In my movies, I’m drawn to working with kids and animals, too, so I think I just never read the rules. I was a kid who grew up in Texas obsessed with The Rocky Horror Picture Show. That was my every Saturday night, I saw that musical, and it defied logic for me. My mom and dad were massive lovers of Broadway musicals, so every Broadway musical album was always playing in the house. From an early age, I just became mesmerized by them because you could entertain, but then you could break into song. When the right project has landed in my lap, I’ve loved that opportunity.

Thompson: How did you know that this was the right one? You have a long legacy with Heathers: The Musical. When I heard about it as a concept several years ago, loving the original movie, I thought it was blasphemy.

Fickman: (Laughs) I probably felt the same way. It was about 2005 when another one of our musicals premiered on Showtime and Sundance called Reefer Madness. The producers brought me the idea and said, ‘Do you think Heathers could be a musical?’ I immediately was like, ‘It’s one of my favorite movies. I don’t want to destroy it but let me think.’ My partner Kevin Murphy came on board, we had been looking to do something with Larry O’Keefe, who did the book for this, and we all got our heads around it. We sat with Dan Waters, the creator of Heathers, and we set about seeing if we could take what he did but take it in a different direction with his help. Between him, the original director Michael Lehmann, and Denise Di Novi, the original producer, who had been by our side from day one, everyone saw what we were doing, got on the bandwagon, and their blessings opened the door. Winona Ryder saw it in LA, Christian Slater saw it in New York, and Lisanne Falk saw it in London, and having so many of the original cast members see it and sign off on it has meant the world to us.

Thompson: In your mind, were you the only one to be able to put this musical on film again? Or were you thinking that you’re the last person who should do this because you’re so close to it?

Fickman: That’s a great question. Because I do so much film and television, a part of me feels like that’s what I naturally do. When the discussion came up with our partners at Village Roadshow, it was an easy blink for me to be like, ‘Oh, well, I know it so well, but now the film and TV side of me knows where to put my cameras.’ I never felt, ‘I won’t bring anything fresh to it.’ I think it’s also because I’m still in the middle of it, where as soon as we launched stage capture, we went into rehearsals for our new cast. This last week, I just finished rehearsals for the next cast that’s up and running through February, so I think because it’s not dusting it off, it’s exercising so many parts of the brain that probably made it very easy for me.

Thompson: So Heathers: the Musical as a TV movie is a point in the show’s evolution rather than an end?

Fickman: 100 percent because after years of doing our developmental readings with our fantastic cast, by the time we opened in LA, all of a sudden, we were the sold out hit show in our little theater. Then the New World Stages came from Off-Broadway and said, ‘Come to New York. You have no time to pack.’ We took our cast and tiny set to New York, we were up and running, and then we were closed several months later. Then we had this opportunity in 2017. Paul Taylor-Mills, who was running Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Other Palace in London, England, called and said, ‘What if you came here?’ We were like, ‘Would anyone there know anything about Heathers or MTV in the 80s or Sherwood, Ohio?’ We’ve constantly been evolving. By the time we got to the UK, between The Other Palace and the Haymarket in the West End, we’d added new songs and made the script stronger. Doing a stage capture now does feel like a tremendous opportunity and an evolution.

Thompson: I wanted to ask you about your decision to do stage capture with this show. Your previous musical movie, Reefer Madness, was off the stage, on location, and in the real world. You decided to keep Heathers on stage. Why was that?

Fickman: One of the things we love that is unusual about this show, and again, this speaks to me from Rocky Horror, is that we say that our audiences are our fifth Beatle. The nightly fan reaction, people dressed in cosplay, the screams and shouts, and the interactivity where they hit certain laughs are what we wanted to show as part of the experience for Heathers. We wanted to show that Heathers: The Musical is something that exists because our fans have blown it up so much. This version was the one that got us the most excited. We thought, ‘What if people could see if they couldn’t come to London, Los Angeles, or wherever? What if they could experience what it was like if they did go?’

Thompson: This is show business, so it’s great that people can watch this in their own home, but that means there might be one less butt in a seat.

Fickman: There’s always a sense of that. I think what shows such as Hamilton have demonstrated with their fantastic stage capture is that it shouldn’t detract from the theatrical experience. A fan should be able to go and be like, ‘I want to go see that.’ I had seen The Rocky Horror Picture Show literally 300 times on film, but when they did the revival in New York, I must have seen it ten times on stage. It wasn’t that I didn’t know Rocky Horror, but I desperately wanted to experience it for myself. We might lose a butt, but maybe we gain a butt. The options could go either way.

Thompson: I’m also a massive fan of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen the movie and the production on stage. With your success with Heathers: the Musical, have you thought about giving this treatment to Rocky Horror? That hasn’t been done.

Fickman: The only way in my mind I could do it was if I was sitting across from Richard O’Brien, and he told me he had this idea. I would do it and follow up with Shock Treatment. I would do it all. I’d feel, in that case, much the same way we have the reverential treatment of the original Heathers. I look at Richard O’Brien in the sense that everything emanates from him. When Flash Gordon came out, I was the guy who, whenever Richard O’Brien was on screen, would turn to everyone and be like, ‘I don’t know if you know who that is. That is Richard O’Brien. Let me tell you a little about Rocky Horror.’

Thompson: What can you tell me about the changes you needed to make to realize Heathers: The Musical on screen? Were there some you didn’t anticipate?

Fickman: My biggest challenge was I wanted the audience to have the best seat in the house. Sometimes I would be frustrated because I would sit in the back of a theater and see a particular row leaning over to try to get a better look. I would be angry at myself and think, ‘I don’t know how to fix that on stage. I don’t know how to tweak it enough.’ Nobody should have to look around anybody to see the shot, and now they should see it for real.

Thompson: Did you shoot this all in one or bit by bit?

Fickman: From the beginning, because I do a lot of multicam in TV and films, I knew it would be a blend. We’d spend a couple of days shooting it piece by piece where I can really get in close. I wanted to shoot the audience and run it head to toe a couple of performances because we desperately wanted to get that energy.

Thompson: Has it made you think about what else you can do with the show?

Fickman: I feel like Kevin, Larry and I are in the middle of our journey. We did our first tour to parts of the UK, and then I was like, ‘Maybe I could take this show to places around the world.’ We hear from so many countries, and some of them have the amateur rights, but I would love the chance to take a version of the show around the world.

Thompson: When did you know this worked? Did you look at the final cut and feel it?

Fickman: I can’t watch my movies or TV shows after they come out. I think the benefit of having that live audience was that it matches what I’m used to in the show. It wasn’t that moment where you had to sweeten a laugh or add a cheer. Sometimes we were taking down some noise where our crowd was so rowdy because we’re like, ‘That sounds like my mom’s in the audience.’ I think when I showed it to Kevin and Larry for the first time was probably when I was the most nervous. That was like when your kid shows you their art and you’re like, ‘Please God, don’t be horrible. I love you forever, and I don’t want this to suck.’ Kevin and Larry were so overwhelmed and excited that, to me, was the moment where I knew we had done something right.

Heathers: The Musical premieres on The Roku Channel on Friday, September 16, 2022.