Former 'Smash' boss speaks out on departure

Published on November 28, 2012 09:35PM EST

Smash creator and former showrunner Theresa Rebeck has broken her silence about her departure from the NBC drama.

In an interview with the New York Observer, Rebeck, whose exit from the freshman program was announced in March, admits she struggled with the lack of creative control, saying in part: “One of the points of contention last year was that the network thinks they have the right to say to the writer of the show, ‘We don’t want her to do this. We want her to do this’…And I would sometimes say back to them, ‘She would never do that.’ And they’d look at me like I was crazy, and I’d be like, ‘Nope, it’s not crazy, it’s just who the character is.’ You have to respect who the character is.”

Rebeck, who is currently promoting her new Broadway play, Dead Accounts (starring Katie Holmes), went on to say of her tangles with the network: “It turns into bigger questions about power and art, power and storytelling. Is power itself bigger than storytelling? And I would say no.”

NBC had no comment on the article.

Smash returns for a second season on February 5 under the eye of former Gossip Girl boss Josh Safran.

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