Exclusive: HAZBIN HOTEL's Sam Haft Is Fulfilling Theater Dreams with New Murder Mystery Musical

These days, the Helluverse seems to have taken over the mortal world. What began as a Patreon-funded animated project in 2014, Vivienne Medrano’s musical series Hazbin Hotel has become nothing short of a phenomenon. Its rabid fan base can be found across the internet, passionately arguing for their favorite fandom ships on many a discussion forum, or at conventions, wearing one a piece of themed Hot Topic merch.

No small part of its success can be attributed to Sam Haft, one half of the songwriting duo who is responsible for the show’s musical numbers. Together, he and his partner Andrew Underberg have penned over a hundred songs for the series, which have become extremely popular in their own right. But with two successful seasons under his belt (and three more to go), Haft can't claim complete responsibility for the pop culture triumph.

“We have this instinct to lionize creators for their success, but their success is one of the things that they have the least control over. I think you don't choose to have fans; fans choose you to be fans of,” he says. “You're throwing stuff out into the void that you think is good as an artist and then people respond, or they don't. But once it's out of your hands, it is out of your hands.”

Hazbin Hotel centers on Charlie Morningstar, the princess of Hell who nobly attempts to rehabilitate demons to reduce overpopulation in her kingdom. She is joined by an eclectic cast of characters whose opposing goals and belief systems allow room for the series to pose deep ethical questions about good and evil, and the complicated realities of morality. All of this exists within the confines of a darkly comic animated world filled with songs that cross genre, style and musical traditions.

Haft, who went to school for playwriting, leans on his background in exposition, character work, and story development to create very specific musical moments for the show's now-beloved characters. "Essentially, every song is like a scene assignment for a staff writer in a script where it goes, 'Here's the scene that comes before you, here's the scene that comes after you. Here's the character development that needs to occur. Here's the expository beats that we need to hit,' he explains. "There's so much story work that is inherent to what we're doing... The box creates the solution, really. It almost feels like we are not writing a song so much as discovering what song goes there."

Charlie's kingdom found itself on Broadway last year, with an IRL, one-night concert at the Majestic Theatre in October. The event featured many of the show's powerhouse performers, including cast members Erika Hennigsen, Jeremy Jordan, and Christian Borle. Also present was Haft, who juggled roles as a performer in addition to serving as a musical director. Between his offstage and onscreen tasks, he admits it was a stressful day.

"I felt like [I] was Kermit the Frog in The Muppet Show... There's that famous picture of Kermit with his face sort of folding into a fist and I felt that was my energy the entire time... I was in basically a prolonged panic attack all day." 

The concert itself offered a unique opportunity for both the actors and for fans: live performances of the musical numbers from the original cast, many of whom likely hadn't sung them since the studio recordings, with minimal time to rehearse. A New Medium brings new challenges, especially for a song like season one's 'Stayed Gone,' which requires technical and physical feats that had to be translated from animation.

"There are things that we can do in animation, like having a character with a TV head short-circuit, which are really difficult production design challenges for live [performance]. But there are really things that you take for granted completely in live performance that become incredibly laborious in animation. For example, having a character turn around 360 degrees; that is expensive. That is hours and hours and hours of [an] animator's work. Whereas on stage it's just a guy [who] spins around," explains Haft.

"And beyond that, when you're dealing with a television show, this is recorded music, not live-performed music," he continues. "So we also don't need to think about breath, which becomes another big, big component and was a very big component in rendering "Stayed Gone" on stage because that is such a mile-a-minute, wordy, wordy song. And Christian Borle, the emperor of patter, thankfully picked up the torch." 

With three more seasons of Hazbin on the way, Haft and Underberg have already completed the songs for the next two. Haft likens the continued songwriting experience to bodybuilding, with each season growing larger.  "We are able to handle more weight and we are able to flex those muscles faster and to a greater degree. Season one, we were flying by the seat of our pants. We were learning as we went. Season two, we had a real grasp of what the task was. And for seasons three and then four, it felt like we were really just honing the skill of writing for Hazbin Hotel as a very, very hyper-specific musical skill."

Writing across multiple seasons also allows the writers to revisit specific musical themes through the use of certain theatrical conventions. "Reprise is such a central piece of the musical theater songwriting toolkit. And because of that, we actually try to use it really, really sparingly and really, really selectively. One example of using that in the most emotionally manipulative, surgical way is bringing back 'It Starts with Sorry' in 'Live To Live' in season one because there really hasn't been a true season one reprise in season two until that moment."

"[The song] comes pretty much at the beginning of the plot. It's just this silly, earnest, pathetic moment with Sir Pentious, but the way we bring it back fundamentally re-contextualizes it in season one. So now all of a sudden, if you go back and look at that moment, you go, 'Oh my God, this is the moment Charlie changes everything, but she doesn't know it yet.' I think moments like that, [where] we can be really, really intentional with ways to bring back motif and lyrical or musical ideas that exist in previous songs— that really gets us fired up."

With Hazbin Hotel animators hard at work to bring the new songs to life, Haft remains busy on another musical project. Titled The Con, it is an original stage musical that, when first announced earlier this year, had no plot, title, or songs. What it did have was a date and a venue: May 17, 2027 at Palladium Times Square in New York. Haft says that bringing Hazbin to Broadway unleashed a certain "theater kid demon" that sparked movement on his longtime goal of writing for the stage. 

Once again working with Underberg on the songs, the musicians brought in writer Jenny Jaffe to complete the team. This collaboration came courtesy of Hazbin's Erika Henningsen, whose friendship with Jaffe led to a meeting between the two writers. They immediately hit it off, with one particular musical to thank for it.

"The first thing we talked about was Bat Boy: The Musical, which we all have tremendous affection for. It was a friendship forged in Bat Boy," Haft recalls. After the team put down a deposit for the Palladium, it was time to get to work on a story, which revolves around a culture that Haft knows very well.

"Through Hazbin, I am a guest at a lot of Comic-Cons now. I do signings," he explains. "I grew up going to cons myself and loving anime and gaming and cartoons and everything that exists at these conventions. And getting to be on the other side of the signing table has been such a treat. But now I've seen this culture in the way it has grown from a bunch of different angles across a bunch of different demographics."

Taking inspiration from the 1985 film Clue ("[It's] one of my five favorite movies of all time"), Haft was eager to create a musical that utilizes a central characteristic of Hazbin Hotel: an "element of villainy." The result is something that lives in the murder mystery genre, while also borrowing from the world of video games.

"Is there a way to make a musical repeatable the way a video game is repeatable?" Haft wondered. "How can we make a rogue-like musical? And figuring out how we might be able to create this element of surprise and randomness in every show."

Citing works like Oh, Hello on Broadway and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Haft and the team are developing a musical that has room for major variance from performance to performance, both in the actual storytelling and among the guest cast. This, he hopes, will allow for repeated visits, bringing back audience members for multiple different performances.

"The two components that we're really thinking about are: who gets killed and who is responsible? And is there a way to make a show where 90% of the songbook is the same every night, but that extra 10% changes who dies and who does the killing? All the clues are the same, but they interpolate in a different way night to night." 

Though there is currently just the one scheduled date at the Palladium, Haft's plans for the musical reach far beyond New York. "My dream... is that we could tour it at conventions and use the conventions to be like, 'Oh my God, did you see the show?' 'Oh yeah, I saw it last week in Oklahoma City where Hayden Christensen was killed by Dave the volunteer!' That idea that you're getting a slightly different show where and when you see it and being able to actually place it in a convention would be so exciting."

When discussing his projects, Haft is as passionate as they come. He clearly loves the craft, both as a creator and as an audience member. And, as he sees it, this is actually a key quality for reaching new theater audiences: not chasing a desire to be "cool," but being unapologetically a "theater kid."

"I think Broadway and theater kiddom is, to use a very online term, cringe. And you need to embrace that. What is cringe, but earnestness?" he offers. "Be what a musical is and be proud of it. I think that's one of the pieces of common DNA between Hazbin and Broadway. This idea of, lean into the earnestness. Don't pretend like I'm doing this sick cool thing. No, we're being theater kids together and we are on this super, super earnest wavelength that maybe not everyone's going to get, and that's okay. Let's super serve the people who do get it."

Photo credit: Valerie Terranova/Getty Images for Prime Video

Don't Miss a Broadway News Story
Sign up for all the news on the Summer season, discounts & more...