American Idol alumni Carrie Underwood is going to be slipping on a habit and taking on the role of Maria in a TV version of the musical ‘The Sound of Music’.
The NBC program will see Underwood taking on the lead role of Maria, the novice nun who is sent to help out a widowed naval officer and his seven children by becoming their governess.
Stephen Moyer, from ‘True Blood’ will be playing Captain Von Trapp, while Laura Benanti will take on the role of Baroness Schrader. ‘Smash’ star Christian Borle will play the Captain’s friend Max Dettweiler. Five time Tony Winning actress Audra McDonald will play the Mother Superior.
The live production is set to go to air in the USA in early December. The creative team behind the production also worked on the TV show ‘Smash’ which was cancelled earlier this year at the end of it’s second season.
The show will be based on the original Broadway script, but will include all the songs from the popular 1965 film.
‘The Sound of Music’, with it’s award winning songs by Rogers and Hammerstein, opened on Broadway in 1959 with Mary Martin in the lead role. It was the final collaboration between the songwriter duo following their success with ‘Oklahoma’, ‘South Pacific’, ‘State Fair’, ‘Carousel’ and ‘The King and I’. A few months after the musical opened Oscar Hammerstein II passed away.
The film version is one of the most successful motion pictures of all time. Shot on location in Salzburg Austria, it starred Julia Andrews and Christopher Plummer. For the film version two songs were dropped from the original production as Richard Rogers created two new songs for the film.
