Until its recent series finale, Siddhartha Khosla has been the composer-in-residence on NBC’s hit “This is Us” for the past six seasons. But not even he could have imagined that his job would take him from one show starring a pop idol (Mandy Moore) to another (Selena Gomez in “Only Murders in the Building”), or that he would have a small part in both. Moore and Gomez demolishing their once squeaky clean images to create more dramatic small-screen characters that audiences came to love.
Now, his work as the theme song on both projects has earned him three Emmy nominations this year. (More on that in a moment.)
“Dan Fogelman, who created ‘This is Us’ [and produces ‘Only Murders in the Building’], he’s a really good friend of mine from college,” says Khosla, “and he sent me the pilot episode of ‘Only Murders’ written by John Hoffman and Steve Martin, and I was absolutely blown away. I wrote an email with the subject line ‘Only murders…’ and the body of the email said ‘…it’s magic’. I’ve been messing around with modern and classical instrumental recordings just for myself, and played some of these ideas for John. And he said, ‘This is the pitch of my show, you’re already in that wheelhouse.’ Then I got the job.”
When “Only Murders” premiered on Hulu late last summer, excited fans raved about marker as did the excellent chemistry of Gomez, Martin and Martin Short, the trio of mismatched detectives who reside in Arconia, the old Manhattan apartment building where they uncover a murder.
Each of them, says Khosla, has its own distinct musical arrangement.
“Selena’s Mabel definitely has a modern sound, a little more atmospheric, a little darker. Charles [played by Steve Martin] has a very stately sound to him, and Marty Short’s Oliver has a kind of quirkiness to him, in keeping with his role as a New York theater director. So with him there’s a bit of a jazzy element, more playful.”
Khosla is nominated for the main title theme, and also for his work on the Season 1 episode “The Boy from 6B,” which dropped all dialogue for its ASL-based story of a deaf father and son (Nathan Lane and James Caverley). Told only with sound effects and heavy doses of Khosla’s silent orchestrations, the action felt like a silent film.
“Some of the early conversations involved the episode being completely silent,” Khosla recalls. “But when we started editing the episode, it became clear that music would play a very integral role in helping tell the story. I think a lot in terms of melody, I’m a singer-songwriter even before I’m a songwriter, so a lot of my compositions have always been melody-driven. And so, in an episode like this with no dialogue, the main cello line or the melody ended up being some kind of dialogue. It was incredibly rewarding to be a part of, with all the amazing sound design from our team there.”
As for the final season of “This is Us,” the long-running NBC series didn’t get much love from the Television Academy this year, but Khosla’s original song for Rebecca Pearson (Moore), titled “The Forever Now.” ” (written with Moore’s real-life husband, Taylor Goldsmith), made the Emmy cut.
“You always record two versions of a song, the one that charts and then the version we use for the episode,” which Khosla indicates is a variation of the show’s end credits theme and which Moore sang live as the version Rebecca’s aged. at the wedding of her daughter Kate (Chrissy Metz). The scene and the song fully incorporated Rebecca’s Alzheimer’s and her subsequent state of mind.
“That was the thing that Mandy and I talked about, so it seemed like at some point he’s groping but then he’s like, ‘I’m going to find the song and then I’m going to nail it,'” Khosla says, noting that they were inspired. . for the recent concert of Tony Bennett, suffering from Alzheimer’s, he succeeds with Lady Gaga despite her advanced age.
“All the reactions you see in that scene are real, it’s just a testament to how good an actress Mandy is. In fact, she lowered her voice to play Rebecca throughout the series. We were all disappointed in her. [not getting nominated] and felt that he deserved that love. But at the end of the day, the role that she played is iconic. And nothing can take away that legacy.”
“Only Murders in the Building” Streams on Hulu; “This is Us” airs on Hulu and Peacock.