"A Thousand and One Nights" is an original song introduced in the twelfth episode of the first season of the musical TV series Smash, entitled "Publicity".
It was written by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman,[1] but in the episode, it's presented as a character's fantasy of a Bollywood musical number so the songwriter is unnamed.
In the episode, Karen Cartwright (Katharine McPhee and her boyfriend Dev (Raza Jaffrey) are having a tense dinner with movie star Rebecca Duvall (Uma Thurman) at an Indian restaurant.
An uncomfortable Karen starts watching a Bollywood movie on one of the screens, and then imagines herself in a Bollywood-style movie with first Dev, then herself singing the song, with practically the entire rest of the main cast and various supporting players of the series performing as backup.
I understood how Karen wanted to go to a happy place when a friend and your boyfriend are fighting over you like you aren’t there.