Jane Levy: Going from Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist's cancelation to Zoey's Extraordinary Christmas was "definitely a roller coaster of emotion"

TV Guide

"So we wrapped Season 2 in March or April. I think I got back April 1, and we were all very convinced that we were going to have a Season 3," she tells TV Guide. "We have such great support, a huge fan base, critical acclaim, awards, award nominations. We were just like, 'Duh, it's in the bag. We're going to make a Season 3.'  So I put all my stuff in storage in Canada — I collected a lot of appliances: I was there for eight months straight during the pandemic; I had my cappuccino maker and my Dyson air purifier for the wildfire smoke…Okay  too much information! — I put it all in storage, we all said, 'Bye! See you soon.' And then because of the pandemic, it wasn't a normal year with pickups, so we had to wait an extra-long time, but the rumors were, 'You're going to get picked up.' Then I was basically told that we were picked up. And then two days later, I was told, 'Oh, no.' I was told that we were going to Peacock — we were canceled, but we were going to go to Peacock. Then I was told, 'Actually, you're not going to Peacock. You're just canceled.' And I was like, 'Oh, what?' Then I sort of started to process that and accept it. And then three weeks later, I got a call, and it was like, 'We're going back to Canada in six weeks and we're shooting a Christmas movie with Roku!'"

ALSO:

• Zoey’s Extraordinary Christmas ended up being a condensed version of what was planned for Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist Season 3: Creator Austin Winsberg and his writers had five weeks to break the story, write an outline and pen the script, two weeks for pre-production and three weeks of filming. The two-hour Roku Channel movie ended up condensing what Winsberg had planned for Season 3 before NBC's cancelation. “It’s honestly a testament to the entire group because we had back so many of our department heads,” says Winsberg. “There’s so many people who are already so deeply entrenched in the world of the show, that it eliminates a lot of the questioning and guessing and ‘what ifs’ because we’re already on the same page about what we’re trying to accomplish.”
• Season 3 would've spent more time with Skyler Astin's Max: The plan, says Winsberg was to play "into the romantic comedy of what it’s like to date somebody while both of you knowing exactly what’s going on in the other person’s head all the time. I thought we could get funny glitch episodes out of that. I always knew that the end part of that storyline was going to be why he got the powers and what the purpose behind that was for him, and that was really to create empathy for Zoey’s struggle. He finally understands what it’s like to be Zoey, to deal with those powers, and that’s when the powers were going to go away. So being able to tell that in the movie allowed me to kind of have closure on that part of the story that I had in my head.”