US broadcaster NBC’s live production of Jesus Christ Superstar has helped Andrew Lloyd Webber, Tim Rice and leading man John Legend join a select group of multi-award winners.
The threesome added an Emmy to their Tony, Grammy and Oscar haul when the critically-acclaimed broadcast was named as the best live variety special at Sunday’s glittering Emmy Awards ceremony.
Joining an elite group that includes Mel Brooks, Audrey Hepburn, Rita Moreno and Whoopi Goldberg, Legend, Lloyd Webber and Rice became the 13th, 14th and 15th members of the so called EGOT club with the win for the ratings winning show broadcast on Easter Sunday this year.
Lloyd Webber and Rice’s Emmys were added to the Tonys they jointly received for Evita, the Grammys they collected for Evita and the Oscar they won for ‘You Must Love Me’ from the film version of Evita.
A winner of 10 Grammys, Legend won an Oscar for his song ‘Glory’ from the movie Selma and last year won a Tony for Best Revival of a Play as a co-producer of August Wilson’s Jitney.
Marketed and promoted as ‘event TV’, Jesus Christ Superstar Live! was executive produced by Lloyd Webber and Rice alongside award-winning film and theatre producers Marc Platt, Craig Zadan and Neil Meron.
Legend had previously worked with Platt as a producer on the smash hit movie La La Land and with Zadan and Meron when the pair produced the 2015 Oscar telecast in which Legend performed the triple award winning ‘Glory’ with Common.
NBC’s live broadcasts of major Broadway shows began in 2013 with a production of The Sound of Music featuring multi-award-winning country star Carrie Underwood. The shows (Peter Pan with Christopher Walken, The Wiz with Queen Latifah, and Hairspray Live! with Harvey Fierstein) are usually heavily promoted and have all proved to be hits in the ratings.
Angela Thomas
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