Their lives changed in a New York minute.
The childhood friends from England who wrote “Two Strangers (Carry A Cake Across New York)” — which has been nominated for a staggering eight Tony Awards — never even lived in New York before writing the Broadway musical.
Kit Buchan and Jim Barne had only visited the Big Apple as tourists, so relied heavily on films based in the city to pen the production.
“All our lives, we just absorb so much of this city and felt so familiar with it, despite the fact that the majority of what we were digesting was actually movies,” Buchan told The Post.
During the writing process for the show — which follows a British tourist enamored with New York City who meets a native Brooklynite immune to its charms — the pals rewatched classics set in NYC.
“We would work during the day and then at night we would watch a romcom,” Barne said.
The pair couldn’t even name all the movies that influenced them while writing the show, whose Tony nominations include Best Musical and Best Book for their script.
“But certainly ‘Crossing Delancey,’ ‘When Harry Met Sally…,’ ‘Moonstruck,’ ‘Serendipity,’ also the first two in the ‘Before’ trilogy [‘Before Sunrise’ and ‘Before Sunset’],” Buchan said.
“There’s also the Christmas movies, like ‘Home Alone 2’ and ‘Miracle on 34th Street’ … And even beyond that [rom-com] genre, there’s obviously like all the Spike Lee and [Martin] Scorsese films.”
The duo also made sure to tackle the fact that most New Yorkers aren’t living or hanging out in the touristy areas these films are set in — partly because they cannot afford them.
“At one point you come to the realization that a lot of these films that are set in New York, they’re really set in only one stratum of New York, which is a stratum that is not really accessible to most people,” Buchan said.
“And certainly our lead female character isn’t living that way,” he added of their protagonist, Robin, who lives in Flatbush and makes ends meet by working at a coffee shop.
Actual New Yorkers working on the show — which first opened in London in 2023, and came to Broadway at the Longacre Theatre in November — also helped the scribes by pointing out lines that weren’t authentic.
“We had a traffic report that used the phrase ‘Brooklyn Queens Expressway.’ And there was a New Yorker working on the show, Michelle, who’s actually from Flatbush, and she was like, ‘No one ever says ‘Brooklyn Expressway,’” Buchan recalled.
“And that’s something that you couldn’t know, even if you visited New York loads of times.”
One of the quotes that gets the most laughs is “You’re from New York, so you must go to the Statue of Liberty all the time.”
“You know, that never really got a laugh in London,” Buchan said. “Because they don’t understand it.”
The duo reflected on two pinch-me moments where famous faces came to see the show.
“Susan Sarandon,” Buchan gushed.
“I wasn’t even there, and I was dazzled. I couldn’t believe it was happening.”
“We just see the show report and it’s like, ‘Oh, Lin-Manuel Miranda just came to see your show,’” Barne added.
“You know, you don’t get the biggest celebrities in the world coming to see musicals in London … That’s when it hits home.”
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
