THE IRRATIONAL Post-Mortem: Jesse L. Martin and Karen David on Their LITTLE SHOP Duet and the Rose Reveal

[Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Tuesday, March 18 episode of THE IRRATIONAL.]

It didn’t matter that the LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS’ original leading lady was placed under arrest on the Tuesday, March 18 episode of THE IRRATIONAL: The show must go on.

Enter fixer Rose (Karen David) who stepped in mid-performance to join her behavioral science professor boyfriend, Alec (Jesse L. Martin)—who was already undercover—to duet as Audrey and Audrey II in “Sominex.”

“I think the selection came because I had a little list of things that I knew I’d feel comfortable singing,” Martin tells Give Me My Remote in the video below. “LITTLE SHOP was on that list. It just so happened [that] LITTLE SHOP we could get the rights to. So that made it easy. So there was the choice.”

“I’ve never done that show, I’ve never played this part, but I certainly wanted to,” he continues. “I’m a fan of the show and I’m a fan of the movie. So I had it in me somewhere, and it was fantastic to finally get there and them say ‘action’—where normally you’d hear ‘curtain’—[to] me getting to sing those songs. So it was more than I wanted and way more than I expected, and I’m very, very glad that we did it. Very glad that we did it, because it was a lot of fun.”

“At one point, Jesse and I were just looking at each other saying, ‘Wow, we’re really doing this,’” David adds. “And our guest cast, everyone, even the crew, we all had the time of our lives on this episode.”

Despite the television production, the actors performed in front of an audience—one way or the other. “There were times when the audience, the full audience, was there, and it just felt like a play,” Martin says. “Of course, you move cameras and we need angles, that changes. But we still always had the crew there as our audience. So it always felt like a play, which is really nice when you’re doing a play within a play.”

“It was nostalgic,” David adds. “It just took me right back to drama college days. It took me back to theater back in London and the West End when I was performing. It was so joyful and wonderful, and it was a strong reminder just of how much I missed it. And to be able to do that in TV was just thrilling.”

Though the musical was the hook, the episode ended with quite the cliffhanger: Rose has a husband.

“Well, as the kids say, W.T.F.,” Martin jokes.

“Mic drop,” David replies with a laugh.

But in all seriousness, the reveal even shocked David. “When I read this script initially, I was so caught up in the excitement of Jesse singing and us doing LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS that when I came to the final page, I was like, ‘Wait, wait, what?’” David recalls. “It was like, record scratch…I was like, ‘Oh, no.’ I just thought, ‘What else is Rose going to reveal that’s going to test their relationship?’”

David was confident there would be an explanation, but even so, “it’s a lot,” she acknowledges. “She’s testing the relationship yet again. And I just thought in my mind, ‘Oh my God, everyone’s going to be so mad, quite, rightfully so, at Rose.’ For a week, at least!”

THE IRRATIONAL, Tuesdays, 10/9c, NBC

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