‘Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies’: Jason Schmidt Explains How Paramount+ Series Is a ‘Wild Ride’ (Exclusive)

Grease was a huge hit when it was released in 1978 and is still talked about today. This has led to Paramount+ distributing new prequel series based on the classic movie called Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies. PopCulture.com spoke exclusively to Jason Schmidt, who plays Buddy in the series, and he explained what fans can expect to see in the show that premiered on April 6. 

“I think the fans can expect a lot of nods to Grease, a beautiful love letter from a team of people who are fans of the show,” Schmidt exclusively told PopCulture. “They can expect 30 original songs and one cover. They can expect romance, they can expect fun, they can expect laughing. Oh, it’s a wild ride.”

Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies takes place four years before the events of Grease. In 1954, the T-Birds ruled Rydell High School, which led to four outcasts coming together to form a group that would change the school forever. Buddy is not a T-Bird but is arguably the most popular person in the school, wearing many hats at Rydell. 

“Buddy is the golden boy of Rydell High,” Schmidt said. “He’s the quarterback, the current class president. He’s kind of the social king. He has this big, beautiful heart, but he has some lessons to learn along the way. So you kind of get to follow his journey as he makes the choices to possibly become a new better person.”   

With Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies being a series, it can touch on multiple topics that the movie starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John couldn’t. “There’s a little bit of a more modern style, I think a spectrum of tone that it lives on from the Grease doo-woppy to the modern style that we’re kind of going with,” Schmidt explained. “And I think everything in the show lives somewhere in between. I also think our show tackles a lot of the tougher subjects to the 50s and doesn’t shy away from them. I think it does it in a graceful way where it doesn’t feel like you’re being hit over the head with it or anything, but you’re seeing what these characters and what these people were dealing with in the 50s at that time and just day-to-day circumstances. And I think that’s really, I was always really proud reading the scripts of the way that they were tackling things and that they were tackling things and not just avoiding it.”

Schmidt stars in Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies along with Marisa Davila as Jane, Cheyenne Isabel Wells as Olivia, Ari Notartomaso as Cynthia, Tricia Fukuhara as Nancy, Shanel Bailey as Hazel, Madison Thompson as Susan, Johnathan Nieves as Richie, Maxwell Whittington-Cooper as Wally and Jackie Hoffman as Asst. Principal McGee. The first two episodes are streaming now on Paramount+, and a new episode will premiere every Thursday.