Debra Messing and the rest of the Smash cast is covering TV Guide Magazine, pictures and video below. Thanks to Kelly for the scans.

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Magazine & Photoshoots > 2012 > TV Guide – February 2012

I’ve added some new Smash promo pictures to the gallery.

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Television Works > Smash (2011) > Season 1 > Promos

New gorgeous pictures of Debra on the set of Smash on February 2nd.

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Television Works > Smash (2011) > Season 1 > On Set – February 2nd, 2012

Scene: A massive converted warehouse somewhere in Brooklyn, late 2011. The lights come up on the cast of an ambitious network drama about the making of a Broadway musical based on the life of Marilyn Monroe as they screen the series’ pilot during a catered lunch break. Once the credits roll, so do the waves of applause…

As anyone who’s read the copious critical raves knows, Smash — the most faaabulous show that’s not on Bravo — is all that and an orchestra seat. Produced by Steven Spielberg, created by Emmy nominee Theresa Rebeck (NYPD Blue), loaded with tunes by Hairspray Tony winners Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman and boasting a cast so good you’d think it was on cable, this stage-door soap is either gonna be a knock-’em-dead blockbuster or one of TV’s splashiest misfits.

It’s risky for sure. There’s a reason you don’t see a lot of musical dramedies on the small screen, and unless Rachel Berry winds up in the Big Apple, Smash couldn’t be any less like Glee… something NBC chairman Bob Greenblatt is happy about. “Three years ago, everybody thought putting Glee on was crazy, including the network,” says Greenblatt, amid a swarm of hyped-up chorus types and crew members following the cast screening. Having first developed a “darker” version of the backstage serial while heading up Showtime, Greenblatt is grateful that Fox’s show-choir hit “laid the groundwork for music in a TV show,” even while distancing Smash from any comparisons. “Up until Glee, it had been a spotty record for musicals,” he says. “We take our hats off to them. We’re different shows that are going to be lumped together because we’re the only two musicals, but we are very different.”

So different, in fact, that Smash might be too “inside baseball” for the average viewer, which is why the producers have packed it with something for everyone. “If you love theater, you’ll love the show,” says executive producer Neil Meron (a producer of Oscar winner Chicago). “If you have no interest in theater… well, their lives are like everybody else’s, so we’ll be dealing with their parents, boyfriends, girlfriends, their families.” Adds Rebeck, “It’s more character-driven” with “great soap elements” aplenty. “It’s a very complicated world in terms of the class structure,” she says. “It’s very much like Upstairs/Downstairs, except there’s not a mansion; it’s a [theater].”

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An actress playing Marilyn Monroeis twirling among a group of lithe dancers when four of them grab electric fans, angle them just-so toward the ceiling and balloon her skirt, re-creating the blonde bombshell’s iconic pose.

The scene is her breakup with Joe DiMaggio, set to Lexington and 52nd St., one of a number of original songs written for NBC’s Smash (Monday, 10 ET/PT). Or rather, for Marilyn: The Musical, a show-within-a-TV-show taking shape in a Brooklyn TV studio decked out as an austere rehearsal space.

It’s part of a comeback of sorts for Monroe, nearly 50 years after her death: Michelle Williams’ portrayal in My Life With Marilyn won her a third Oscar nomination last week, and Fragments, a collection of her poetry and notes, was published in 2010.

“There’s something about her at the core that everyone can identify with,” says Megan Hilty, a Broadway actress who plays one of two Smash characters vying for the role. “Aside from the glamour, it was that primal animalistic energy she had.”

But it’s also a potential comeback for fourth-place (and nearly hitless) NBC, which is pouring tens of millions of dollars into programming chief Bob Greenblatt’s biggest bet. “It’s a world that is inherently dramatic and visually exciting,” he says, and a departure from the network’s generic cop and lawyer shows, which have mostly tanked. “If it doesn’t work, we’re not going to fall apart. But it’s a big hope that it can land and start to turn the tide around for us. It’s the biggest, buzziest, loudest, highest-concept thing we have.”

And the most heavily marketed, with ubiquitous ads, promos in Sunday’s Super Bowl, free early downloads and last week’s gala premiere at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There’s even (perhaps premature) talk of a real Marilyn musical on Broadway.

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