Jake Shears Talks to Elton John about his New Single & the Musical They've Written

Tammi Faye Bakker finds her way to the screen next month when Jessica Chastain stars as the televangelist celebrity famous for her bubbly personality and the heavy eye make-up that often drenched her face during her tearful outbursts after she and her preacher husband Jim Bakker's fell from public grace. The couple came to fame in the 1970s due to their popular "The PTL Club," a Christian variety/talk show that ended in scandal with Bakker's financial and sexual scandals in 1987. Jim went to prison, Tammi divorced him, remarried, and died of cancer in 2007 at the age of 65.

The upcoming "The Eyes of Tammy Faye" is a biopic adapted from the 2000 documentary of the same name by Fenton Bailey�and�Randy Barbato (from World of Wonder productions). It co-stars Andrew Garfield and Cherry Jones, and is directed by actor Michael Showalter.

And she may turn up on Broadway if the musical of her life that is being developed by Elton John and Jake Shears finds its way to production.

Shears joined John on his podcast Elton John's Rocket Hour on Apple Music 1, which airs on Saturday, to talk about their collaboration, as well as Shears' new single, "Do The Television," and his forthcoming dance album. Listen live for free to the full episode at 9am PT / 12pm ET / 5pm BST tomorrow (Saturday 14h August) at:�apple.co/_RocketHour, or listen back on demand any time with an Apple Music subscription.(Follow this link to the show's page.)

In the interview, John explains how he and Shears had worked together before (with Scott Hoffman) on "I Don't Feel Like Dancing" before writing a musical together. "We're very excited about it. And I loved working with you on that because it's been so much fun and that musical is nearly coming to fruition because when you write a musical, it takes a long time to get everything together. And especially with COVID and everything, everything's been delayed, but I can't wait to show the world that musical that I've written with you because it's so good and so exciting."

Shears replied, "I'm so excited about this show. We've worked on it for a long time and this score that we've written together, it's just, I can't believe we've done this thing. It's just, the songs are amazing and I cannot wait for this musical to see the light of day and to come out into the world."

The details of the musical were not addressed, but in an interview with The Guardian from last December, writer James Graham said that he was writing the book with John and Spears in a musical about Bakker.

When John had to cancel his farewell tour this year, it gave him time to work on the project."We've made real progress and we got a workshop together in November," said Graham. "We hope we might get it into a theatre second half of next year."

The idea for the musical was John's idea because, as the Guardian puts it, the story of Bakker, "a big-haired, shoulder-padded embodiment of 1980s televangelism, would make a great musical."

"She became basically a gay icon because of her liberal support for the gay community during the AIDS crisis," said Graham.

John then turned the subject to Shears single, "Do the Television," which he released in June for Pride month. The funk-laden disco number was produced by Vaughn Oliver and co-written by Shears, Vaughn, and�Ryland Blackinton.�

"I'm really proud of this song," Shears said, "but we started it 10 years ago, basically with Scissors. Babydaddy and I started writing this and it never really had a chorus, and it was just a song that I always really loved and sort of stuck in the back of my mind. And I was just sort of waiting for the time to pull it back out of the drawer again and make an actual chorus for it. And so that's just what we did. I took it to LA to Vaughn Oliver. He's an amazing producer, and we've sort of built the track from the ground up, and we got together and just came up with the rest of it. And I'm really proud of it. It's just really nice to have a song like this that you've loved for years and wanted to do something with and then, finally, finding the right moment to put it out."

John told listeners to go to YouTube and watch the video. "It's one of my favorite singles of the year. And it's just, it makes me happy. And I think at the moment we all need to be a little happy and we all need a bit of levity in our life. And it's certainly filled me with happiness."

Shears also told John his dance album is on its way.

"I'm about two thirds done with it. Just headed to Portugal in a week to sort of finish it up and glue it all together. It's a dance record through and through. I'm very excited about it, I can't wait to play the rest of it for you. I think you're going to love it, I hope."