TV Talk: Pittsburgh-raised creator, actor wrap up ‘High School Musical: The Musical: The Series’

Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen offers a viewing tip for the coming week.

“High School Musical: The Musical: The Series” creator Tim Federle, a 1998 graduate of Upper St. Clair High School, got the sense midway through writing the show’s fourth season that it would also likely be the last season of the series that features Bethel Park native Joe Serafini in a recurring role.

“It felt like we could take a huge risk and end this season on a cliffhanger, as we have the last couple seasons, or maybe we ought to wrap this up on our terms and not overstay our welcome,” Federle said in an interview in his capacity as “HSMTMTS” showrunner. “The kids are graduating from high school — four years, four seasons — something about it felt poetic.”

For Serafini, who has been a guest star, series regular and recurring guest star depending on the season, the show’s final season gives his character, Seb, some dramatic conflict with his boyfriend, Carlos (Frankie Rodriguez), over fallout from a documentary that suggested Carlos cheated on Seb. (Serafini and Rodriguez remain a couple in real life.)

“Obviously, anything you see on reality TV or in a reality-type documentary can be twisted to look a certain way, so of course (Seb) saw that and obviously has some feelings, but what we don’t know is what Seb was also up to whenever Carlos was away from him (at camp),” Serafini said in a phone interview prior to the SAG-AFTRA strike. “I think there’s some things that will come out that gives them some challenges, and we’re just gonna see how they work through them and how it all goes together with the whole drama club.”

Federle said it was important to explore the Seb-Carlos relationship as the show winds down.

“Growing up, I didn’t have really any examples of healthy LGBTQ relationships, certainly not long-term ones that suffer their share of relationship ups and downs but ultimately are better together,” Federle said. “In the writers room (we decided) that there’d be something interesting about them having the most conventional relationship on the show because that subverts the trope so many of us grew up with, which is that queer love is in some ways fundamentally different. I actually think it’s virtually identical when it comes to the things we all want, which is safety and security and for people to really see us for who we are.”

In the season’s flashback-filled sixth episode, Carlos and Seb come to a crossroads — in song.

“Frankie and Joe are both such extraordinary singers — Joe, of course, cutting his teeth at the Pittsburgh CLO — that we had to give them a big, beautiful, modern musical theater power duet,” Federle said. “They knocked it out of the park.”

The plot of the show’s final season, streaming all episodes Wednesday, finds some stars from the original “High School Musical” Disney Channel movie — Corbin Bleu, Monique Coleman, Lucas Grabeel, Bart Johnson, Alyson Reed and Kaycee Stroh — returning to East High in Salt Lake City to film a fourth “HSM” movie with the “HSMTMTS” characters playing extras in the film.

Federle said he did reach out to original “HSM” leads Zac Efron, Vanessa Hudgens and Ashley Tisdale about returning.

“Ashley called me personally and was so lovely. She’s very busy launching brands and it just wasn’t the right timing,” Federle said. “And I got the feeling with Zac and Vanessa, who I don’t know personally but I’m a fan, reading the tea leaves, that by the time you get into negotiating what this would take, we’re gonna wrap and the show will be over.”

Serafini was back in Pittsburgh earlier this summer to play Jack in Pittsburgh CLO’s “Into the Woods,” marking his first return to the CLO stage as an adult.

“It was such a joy but it made me nervous, like, do I still know how to do this?” Serafini said of his return to live stage performance. “Then the muscle memory kicks back in and I was able to have a good time. I’m always going to do more theater, always seeking out those opportunities.”

For Federle, “HSMTMTS” was an opportunity to depict a high school theater club similar to the Center for Theater Arts in Mt. Lebanon, where he was involved as a teen under director Judy Gelman.

“The character of (‘HSMTMTS’ theater teacher) Miss Jen and the spirit and ethos of how she runs that drama department — which is ultimately not about competition and not about stars, it’s about coming together and making something — I really learned that in Pittsburgh,” he said. “It’s really a tribute to those teachers who say, ‘I’m not doing this drama department so that you become a Broadway star. I’m doing this drama department so that you become a functioning citizen.’ Those are Pittsburgh values. That is where I learned it.”

As for what’s next for Federle after the writers’ and actors’ strikes settle (he’s picketed at Disney and Warner Bros. in Los Angeles)? He still has “Sister Act 3” with Whoopi Goldberg percolating (“It’s been hard for our schedules to line up exactly”). And he has projects in the works at Hulu, Disney+ and Disney Studios (“I can’t really say anything about [them] because a lawyer will descend from the sky in a parachute,” he joked).

Although the amount of work that comes with serving as a series showrunner can be overwhelming, Federle found with his first time in that role on “HSMTMTS” that the job fit like a glove.

“Throughout my career, it’s been like Goldilocks: Maybe I want to be a Broadway dancer. And I loved it, but it wasn’t quite right. And then I did novels, and I loved it, but it wasn’t quite right. And finally, I actually just love this job,” Federle said. “What’s been most exciting has had nothing to do with me. It’s been watching Olivia Rodrigo and Joshua Bassett discover their early songwriting voices on the show. It’s been watching Julia Lester, who’s been so open about her own identity and bringing that to life on screen. It’s been seeing Dara Renee bring the story of a young Black woman with anxiety to screen with so much authenticity. My costume designer Maria (Aguilar) getting an Emmy nomination for the first time in her career last season. That, to me, is like a renewable energy source. Whose dream can I play a small role in helping make true today? … It is the most beautiful experience to watch people step into their muchness and into their talents.

“Pittsburgh was the place I was so insecure,” Federle continued, “especially as a middle school theater kid. And whether it was that I was in the closet or that I had a face full of acne — two things that are true — it was my drama teacher saying to me, ‘I know you feel different from everybody else, but if you come hang out with all these kids, you’re gonna realize you’re all weird the same way.’ And, you know, you get enough weirdos together, you’re no longer weird, you’re a club. And that has been the joy of this.”