Movies

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Trivia | 50 facts about the awarded series

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is a romantic comedy series that was awarded 4 Primetime Emmys.

Let’s find out more about the series!

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is an American romantic musical comedy-drama television series.
It premiered on October 12, 2015 on The CW.
It ran for totally four seasons.
It ended on April 5, 2019.
The series was created, written, and directed by the same same people: Rachel Bloom and Aline Brosh McKenna.
Rachel Bloom also stars in the lead role as Rebecca Bunch, a lawyer who moves from New York City to West Covina, California to pursue her ex-boyfriend from high-school summer camp.
While the show drew consistently low ratings throughout its four-season run, it received critical acclaim.
It won several awards including multiple Primetime Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and a Critics Choice Award.
It is one of the lowest-rated shows in television history to be renewed through four seasons by its parent network.
The show formed a notable cult following, with the cast selling-out various live performances on a tour after the show’s conclusion.
The series finale was a filmed live performance.
The series was originally developed for Showtime.
A pilot was produced, but Showtime opted not to proceed with it on February 9, 2015.
The CW picked up the series on May 7, 2015, for the Fall 2015–2016 season.
The series has been extensively reworked for The CW, expanding the show format from a half-hour to a full hour and adjusting the content for broadcast television.
The original pilot was produced for premium cable.
On October 5, 2015, shortly before the series premiere, The CW placed an order of five additional scripts.
On November 23, 2015, The CW ordered another five episodes, raising the total for season 1 to 18.
On March 11, 2016, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend was renewed for a second season, along with eleven other CW series.
The second season commenced on October 21, 2016.
The second season is shown in the UK on Netflix with episodes available the Saturday after the U.S. airdate.
On January 8, 2017, The CW renewed the series for a third season, which premiered on October 13, 2017.
The CW renewed the series for the fourth and final season, which premiered on October 12, 2018.
Each episode contains two to four original songs.
These are usually sung by Rebecca or a character with whom she is having a direct interaction, parodying the musical theater conceit of characters bursting into song at significant moments in the plot.
In “Josh Has No Idea Where I Am”, it is revealed that Rebecca has these musical fantasies out of passion for her love of musical theater.
In later episodes, several other characters sing while Rebecca is not present.
A few of the songs on the show are shot twice, one clean version and an explicit version.
The explicit versions are posted on Bloom’s YouTube channel.
Prior to production Rachel Bloom met with a personal trainer who promised to get her ripped. Bloom decided against it, rationalizing that she wanted to portray her character as someone with an average body type. She also insisted on casting actors of all ages, races and body types to try to injects some realism into the show.
The writers only intended to use Valencia in two episodes, but everyone was so dazzled by Gabrielle Ruiz that she quickly became a series regular.
In order to justify the musical sequences, Rachel Bloom originally conceived a showbiz plot, with her character trying to break into Broadway. Co-creator Aline Brosh McKenna convinced her that it would be more interesting if Rebecca Bunch was merely a woman who envisioned her life as a musical.
During the initial development at Showtime, creators Aline Brosh McKenna and Rachel Bloom mapped out a four-season storyline for Rebecca Bunch. A variety of changes occurred when the show finally went into production for The CW, but the overall plot outline for each season remained unchanged.
The lowest-rated show on broadcast television ever to get a third and fourth-season renewal.159 of
The recurring role of Father Brah is played by Rene Gube, who is a writer and the executive story editor for the show.
The show underwent several years of development for the Showtime network, but once the pilot had been shot, they decided it wasn’t edgy enough. The day before Rachel Bloom’s wedding, she got word that they weren’t going to produce it.
Creators Aline Brosh McKenna and Rachel Bloom wanted the program to show that true, genuine friendships were possible with both the opposite sex and with people a different age bracket. The characters were written to demonstrate this throughout the series.
Rachel Bloom remarked to co-creator Aline Brosh McKenna that she’d had a high school sweetheart who lived near West Covina, and McKenna liked the name, so that became the setting for the show. In November 2015 the cast and crew attended a ceremony in West Covina where they were awarded with the key to the city, and they’ve shot on location whenever possible
Aline Brosh McKenna worked in television early in her career and had no intention of returning. One day she stumbled upon Rachel Bloom’s music videos on YouTube, and was so impressed that she decided to see if she could use her Hollywood connections to help get Bloom a TV series. The project quickly snowballed, and Brosh McKenna found herself completely consumed–writing, producing and even directing.
Rachel Bloom and Donna Lynne Champlin are the only cast members to appear in every episode.
Although portions of the show are loosely based on Rachel Bloom’s real life, Rebecca’s parents are far removed from her own, who are still married and support their daughter by routinely showing up at her various engagements.
The first time choreographer Kathryn Burns worked with Pete Gardner (Darryl), she was so taken by his enthusiasm that she christened him the show’s resident Dance Captain–so Gardner bought a ship captain’s hat, which he’d sport whenever he was around the dance rehearsal area. He can be seen donning the cap in numerous behind-the-scenes photos.
Series co-creator/star Rachel Bloom first met Donna Lynne Champlin in 2005, backstage at a Broadway revival of “Sweeney Todd” (which she starred in alongside future guest-star Patti LuPone). Bloom had Champlin in mind when she was developing the role of Paula but Champlin, who had never been asked to read for a pilot before, was convinced she wasn’t going to get the part.
Rachel Bloom frequently conceived songs on the fly, recorded herself singing them on her iPhone, and sent the mp3s to composer Adam Schlesinger to work off of. Some of these “demos” were later included as bonus tracks on the soundtrack albums.
After Showtime passed on the original pilot, a number of small cable networks showed an interest, but it didn’t look like anything was going to pan out. At the urging of a friend, co-creator Aline Brosh McKenna sat down to binge-watch Jane: The Virgin (2014) and soon realized that it was tonally similar, so she pitched “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” to The CW, which quickly green-lit the series.
49 songs were written only for the first season.
Season 2 features a running gag regarding a song called “Period Sex.” The complete song was never heard in the show, but it was ultimately released on YouTube.
The cast and crew quickly became a family unit, with spouses, longtime friends and family members working on the show in various capacities. Additionally, a lot of the crew don multiple hats–for example, several of the writers and the choreographers appeared in guest-starring roles, and other crew members have been seen as extras.
The Season 2 opening credits sequence features a 1930s Busby Berkeley-style musical number. Since Rachel Bloom is rather short, various problems arose casting dancers and framing the shots to make all of the ladies appear uniformly her height.
The show looked to hire stage actors instead of television or film actors, due to the musical nature of the program.