Ralph Pelleymounter on Decentering the Marilyn Myth and Writing His First Musical

What started as a lockdown obsession between two longtime friends: To Kill A King frontman Ralph Pelleymounter and Bastille’s Dan Smith, has quietly evolved into one of the most ambitious cross-medium projects in UK indie music.

Set against the volatile landscape of 1950s America, Misfits Together, created alongside bookwriter Charlotte Bogard Macleod, it explores the electric, misunderstood relationship between Hollywood icon Marilyn Monroe and playwright Arthur Miller. Ahead of the project’s studio album release and its world premiere at Leicester’s Curve Theatre, Pelleymounter opens up about stripping away the "dumb blonde" trope, finding creative freedom in musical theater, and why a story set 70 years ago feels so eerily contemporary.

This project has been six years in the making. How did it all begin?

We started it during lockdown. While everyone else was baking sourdough, Dan and I decided to take this on. Originally, it was going to be a concept album set in the 1950s. We were really interested in the politics of that decade and were initially looking at a retelling similar to Arthur Miller's The Crucible.

In The Crucible, Miller wrote about the 17th-century Salem witch trials as a lens to critique 1950s McCarthyism. So we thought: What if it’s us looking back at the 1950s from where we sit today? We wrote a few songs, but eventually realized we needed someone who was truly brilliant at long-form storytelling to help us shape it. That’s when Charlotte Bogard Macleod came on board, and she shifted our direction in a major way. Charlotte pointed out, "If you're already looking at Arthur Miller, why not look directly at his relationship with Marilyn Monroe?" At first, we were hesitant. They’re two towering cultural figures, it's there really anything new left to say about them? But the deeper we dug into the research, the more we realized how drastically Marilyn has been reduced over the decades. It’s almost like a photocopy of a photocopy: people flatten her down to just "sex symbol" and "tragic figure. When you actually look into what she achieved, it’s incredible. She was among the first women to found  their own production company (Marilyn Monroe Productions). She was one of the first actors to demand and win final script approval, before that, studios locked actors into five-picture deals with zero creative control. She was deeply vocal during the Civil Rights Movement, and she bankrolled Arthur Miller while he was being targeted by McCarthyism.

Was Misfits Together always intended as a musical?

It was in flux for about the first year. At one point, we thought it might be an audio-first project using archival clips of them alongside our music. But as Charlotte, Dan, and I started working in a room together, it naturally evolved into a musical.

Honestly, a musical makes total sense because both Marilyn and Arthur lived with one foot in a world of heightened reality whether that was Hollywood film sets or the theater stage.

As a fan of musicals myself, I know one of the biggest challenges is making the transition from speaking to singing feel natural. Because these two characters already lived on stage and screen, slipping into song feels organic. Music allows them to express internal desires, secrets, and fears they would never voice out loud in plain dialogue. It also lets us play with time, we have a montage song that’s heavily hip-hop-influenced where they write letters back and forth to compress five years of their relationship.

You’ve been developing this alongside director Nikolai Foster at Curve Theatre. What has the workshop phase been like?

We’ve done four workshops so far, and they were incredible. For anyone who hasn't been through that process: you sit in a room with eight or nine fantastic actors, a musical director, and the director. You get instant feedback. You hear a scene or song and immediately know if it’s landing. Dan and I would duck into a side room and rewrite two songs on the fly. At one point, I had my finger in one ear to block out the scene the actors were playing so I could write new lyrics to a completely different track! That kind of real-time editing saved us six months of back-and-forth.

Why is now the right moment to tell this story?

I keep returning to the phrase, "History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes." When you look at the political climate of 1950s America. McCarthyism, the scapegoating of artists, the LGBTQ+ community, unions and ethnic minorities, you see the exact same patterns playing out today in both the US and the UK.

They’re pointing fingers at different groups now, but the playbook is identical. America is often like us on steroids, but the exact same rhetoric is happening in the UK too.

Using Marilyn and Arthur's relationship is a wonderful vehicle for those heavy political themes, people come for these iconic figures, fall in love with them, and walk away engaging with the underlying politics. A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.

Is it challenging to write songs about real historical figures rather than fictional ones?

Both Dan and I have always written narrative-focused lyrics. If you look below the surface of Bastille or To Kill A King tracks, they’re rarely generic pop songs or straightforward love songs; there’s almost always a story or historical character behind them. What I loved about this project is that you step into someone else's shoes, which requires immense empathy. That said, we didn't want to make them into saints. Both Marilyn and Arthur were deeply flawed, they had affairs, struggled with substance abuse, and carried heavy trauma. But those flaws make them human. They were also both sharp, witty, and charming, and we wanted that humor to shine through.

What is next for you, Ralph?

We have another long-form narrative project called Annie Oakley Hanging, which Dan and I actually started around six or seven years ago. It was recently picked up by Globe, and Shannon McIntosh who has worked as a  producer for Quentin Tarantino on things like the hateful eight and once upon a time in hollywood  has come on board to develop it as a feature film. Having a producer of her caliber attached to a Western project is wild, we couldn't have dreamt it.  

Outside of theater, what’s happening with your own solo music and To Kill A King?

To Kill A King released our fourth and final album, The King Is Dead, Long Live The King, last year. After COVID hit, members of the band moved away, some to Cornwall, others abroad. So keeping the band going full-time became impossible. Doing that final album and tour was our way of giving the project a proper, proud send-off. We're all still great friends, so maybe down the line we’ll do a 15- or 20-year anniversary show for fun. Right now, I'm working on a brand-new theatrical project that I started late last year. We just brought a writer on board, and I’m loving the research and songwriting process.

Looking back, how did you first get into music?

My dad used to run local folk nights and played in a band called The Odd Fellows. Growing up, we had these community get-togethers where everyone played. It was completely unpretentious and inclusive: a teenager might do an acoustic Nirvana cover, and then someone else would play the penny whistle.

It taught me early on that music is something meant to be experienced and shared, there was no barrier to entry. I didn't actually pick up the guitar until I was 15 or 16, but once I did, I fell in love with songwriting immediately, and I’ve been doing it ever since.

A big thank you to Ralph for the time spent with us, you can follow his journey here and you can buy tickets to 'Misfits Together' here.

Article by Sal F. and Photo by Frank Maddocks V