Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies Stars Praise Unsung Heroes of Production (Exclusive)

The first season of Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies released its finale last week, so ComicBook.com had the chance to chat with some of the show's stars. We caught up with Marisa Davila (Jane Facciano) and Tricia Fukuhara (Nancy Nakagawa) about some of the show's biggest moments and their hopes for the future. When it comes to a television show filled with original songs, there are lots of people working behind the scenes. In honor of the many roles that go into a production like Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies, we asked Davila and Fukuhara if there were any unsung heroes they wanted to shout out from their time making the series. 

"Oh my gosh. Unsung heroes. There's so many of them," Fukuhara shared. "Here's the thing, I would love to shout out Chloe [Demetria], who is our vocal coach. She worked with me ad nauseam on everything, and I feel like she was like a therapist, a friend of vocal technique trainer." She continued, "You hear a lot about Justin Tranter and his incredible team, and everyone there is so talented, but you never really hear about Chloe because she was kind of behind the scenes."

Fukuhara added, "The first day that we shot, day zero, we were doing 'Different This Year,' the reprise, the biggest number in the pilot. Or I mean, maybe not the biggest, they're all pretty big. 'Grease is the Word' might be the biggest. Anyway, it was our first day and I came back home and it was late. It's like 11 o'clock or something, and that was the only time I had to have a lesson with her. And she was there at 11 o'clock ready to go, there to help at any time of day, whenever, a voice memo away, text message away, and so patient and so kind and so helpful. And I mean, I think that she deserves all the praise as well."

"Wow, so many," Davila shared. "I think all of our unsung heroes are the ones behind the scenes ... We have an amazing stand-in crew of women that were with us for seven months ... we called them the Pink Ladies 2.0, because they would come to work wearing pink, and were just in such great spirits as well." She added, "Or even our entire background cast stayed the same for seven months. So it was the same background cast. When they were cast, they stayed for seven months on the project, and that was partly because Alethea Jones really wanted ... if you look in the background of a scene and you see a random student, then you're going to see them again in the next episode. Even the people that we go to school with are our classmates. They don't rotate out, and they did such a good job."

Davila continued, "We have a second AD named Sarah Lemmon, we call her Lemmon, and she was phenomenal ... really, really good at her job, and she deserves to hear that any chance she can get, and she would wrangle ... she was the BG Wrangler, but also directed the BG of ... if you see anything kookie happening, like in episode nine, I love in the background, when the lights finally turn back on after Ms. McGee [Jackie Hoffman] and Jane have the conversation, you see these students stand up and have this moment with a hall monitor vest in the back, and that was all Sarah Lemmon. She handled it so that the directors could focus on the actors that were speaking, and then she can fill the rest of the frame, and let everybody pick what they wanted to do, and she was just a really, really big part of the project."

Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies is now streaming on Paramount+.