photo: fox
It may seem to be long but there are LOTS of goodies!
Thank you for FOX for allowing us to participate on the call!
Glee is more than just a successful TV show, with the CDs, iTunes, and the tour. Are you ever surprised at how quickly it became so popular?
Brad Falchuck: I think we’re all very surprised. I mean we shot the first 13 episodes without any of them airing, except we did the special sneak screening of the pilot, so we had no idea what we had. We thought we had something very entertaining and good, but we didn’t know it was going to be quite so epically popular quite so quickly. We’re very pleasantly surprised, obviously. And we knew we were working hard to achieve that, but we didn’t know it was going to become the kind of phenomenon that it has become. We certainly couldn’t have expected that. It would have been inappropriate to expect that; it would have been hubris.
Ian Brennan: Yes, on a daily basis it surprises me. We believe in the show and we knew it was good, but I had no idea. I thought that it would kind of be like a niche hit that was good and people liked, but somehow it just struck a cord with people, and that is a real, real pleasant surprise.
Are you worried at all about any type of over exposure?
BF: I don’t know exactly what we can do about it. It’s sort of like we’re here, get on the conference call; there are 35 reporters that would like to speak to you. We’re going to talk to them. If the President asks you to come or Oprah asks you to come you’re not going to say no. I think all we can really do is keep trying to make the best stories we can and keep these characters interesting, and we really do focus on that. It’s sort of like every at bat is important, and we get up there and try and hit as best we can. It’s really that simple. All that stuff doesn’t mean a lot, when Ian, Ryan, and I get in a room and we’re writing or when we get on the set and we’re working with the actors, it’s sort of none of that outside stuff really means that much. We just have to sort of do our best. And so we don’t worry too much about it, because I don’t think there’s anything we can do about it.
IB: And particularly like Ryan and Brad they both have a real good taste of keeping things– If we keep things interesting for us, and as long as we don’t get bored with it, I think we’ll be fine. And they’re really good, Ryan in particular, just kind of mixing it up and keeping it interesting. So I don’t worry so much about that.
Has there been any pressure felt on a lot of the cast? It kind of seemed to just skyrocket, and it’s everywhere. You can’t escape; even when it’s been off for four months there’s always something going on, White House, record deals, anything like that. Has there been any pressure felt amongst you guys?
IB: Speaking for everyone I mean we just got back from Chicago where we filmed Oprah and then went on to the White House; we just got back last night. I was shocked at how poised and professional everyone has been. And like Brad said earlier, this has been a journey of about a year for them. And so you can see how some of these kids, like Chris Colfer who is 19 years old, how poised and how awesome he is in interviews and on camera, and how much the kids like one another, and like us, at least for now. I think it’s an interesting time for them, but they all seem to be handling it really well, kind of the publicity and the fame and all of it. I could not have been more proud of them this weekend.
Were you both in D.C. yesterday for the White House event? What that was like and what else the cast did there besides the performance?
IB: Met the President, for one, which was amazing. We all did, which was a total, absolute surreal dream. Amber absolutely knocked the National Anthem out of the park; for me it was just one of the best moments of my life by standing there right by … Because we kind of all stood up and watched Michelle and Barack and Malia and Sasha standing next to Amber as she kind of wailed. And what was great was Obama kept looking over to Michelle kind of like eyes wide like damn this girl is good. It was just absolutely, absolutely incredible.
Did the President say he was a fan of the show, because you know Michelle and the daughters both seem to be?
BF: I think he was telling some of the kids that I think he wouldn’t let one of the kids, or maybe both of the kids, watch it yet because they were a little too young.
IB: I think actually Sasha, the young one, does watch it. I think Malia, the older daughter, hasn’t. And I know Michelle has. I don’t know who’s watching it. I would encourage all four of them to watch.
BF: I would encourage all four of them to get Congress to mandate it as some kind of a law that everyone in the country has to watch it. Call it the Glee Reform.
IB: Yes, I think a lot of the problems that we have would be solved if [we all] got together and watched Glee.
Is it harder or easier now to get music clearances on the show now that it has become such a cultural phenomenon? Are the bigger groups more prone or less prone to let you use their music?
BF: It has always been relatively easy; we’ve had a pretty good. PJ Bloom, our music supervisor, does a very good job in clearing songs. But now, when we premiered in the U.K. Don’t Stop Believin‘, the original version suddenly started climbing up the charts again; that’s a 30-year-old song. And so I think artists appreciate that we are never making– Whatever they think of our particular versions of the songs we’re introducing their songs to a whole new generation of people that might not have heard them before. And that works both ways; there are people that, are culture relative right now, that people in their 40’s aren’t that famaliar with, and so they hear a Beyonce song and they’re like hum, Beyonce she’s kind of interesting, and suddenly they’re downloading her music, too. So it works both ways, both with the younger and the older audience on our show.
Is that the reason why we’re seeing so much more music in these back nine? It just seems jammed packed with songs, and I’m guessing that perhaps that comes from the success with the downloads.
BF: No, it actually…like I said, all of the ancillary things, like the downloads and the albums and all of that stuff, is secondary to the storytelling, and we’re always focused on the storytelling first and the fans’ reaction to the storytelling. The reality is from the first 13, like I said, we didn’t know because we hadn’t aired them yet, people love seeing the songs in the show. And so we said well this also kind of works for the show when we have more music, so we decided to put more music in there. It really was to enhance the experience of that hour of watching television. It really wasn’t about what was going to happen after that. And we’ve aired 13 times, and I think when you look at most shows when do they really hit their stride. They hit their stride in season two, season three, and so we’re still really learning the voice of the show and what works and what doesn’t work. And so the more music really has to do with we’re saying maybe more music is better; maybe more music works better for our show.
With product placement becoming very important on scripted shows, shows like yours, American Idol, Dancing With the Stars, So You Think You Can Dance, the ancillary income, the concerts, the iTunes downloads, things like that, is that the new model for shows like this? Is this where the industry is going?
BF: I think that television it’s a much harder marketplace now. If you look at the ratings of even the biggest show on TV, like American Idol, 20 years ago that show would have been canceled because the ratings have been too low. And so it’s a sort of a different marketplace, and so I think that television is adapting, and it’s adapting really well actually, to finding new income streams to make shows profitable. For a while it was DVDs and syndication, and now you look at a show like ours where we sold, you know, we have two gold records, I think four or five platinum singles so far and we’ve only aired 13 times. And then we have the tour coming up; we’ll be in Chicago and New York and LA and Phoenix, and obviously t-shirts and all that stuff. All the little ancillary things I think that any business needs to expand or find new ways to generate revenue, and so I think it’s exciting the way it’s happening. Because the fact is none of it is hurting the brand and none of it is changing the creative process. We’re still just telling the best stories we can tell and trying to put out the best episodes we can put out, and all that other stuff is just enhancing it; it’s not coming first. So I think that’s sort of interesting.
[For Ian] I know you based the initial premise on your experiences singing in show choir at Mt. Prospect High School. I’m wondering what feedback you’ve heard from teachers and students involved in show choir?
IB: I mean I think it’s amazing. I’ve heard kind of rhetorically a lot of schools, I think, are going through, I mean we’re in California, which is having such an incredible budget crisis right now, and I think that’s happening in states everywhere, and I actually heard from a guy who worked I think in the public school system somewhere in Washington state and he was like yes, we’re having a ton of problems, programs are getting cut. The one thing he said, he was like the one thing no one is touching now is Glee Club, which is such a fascinating blow back from this show. Like if you said a year ago that we were going to kind of be a nationwide commercial for show choirs I would have never guessed it. So it’s a weird kind of snake eating its tail aspect for me to have kind of come full circle from when I was in mixed company. I was a cherub; I had the worst haircut and real bad t-zone issues, like just greasy forehead, super skinny in an ill-fitting tuxedo and a sequined tie. And 15 years later this would be happening. It’s all very, very strange and wonderful.
[For Ian] I know you talked sort of generally about things that you based on in the show from your experience at Mt. Prospect, but were there any specific scenes or anything that you did?
IB: No, not at all. It was more my experience in high school. I was in show choir for three years, we weren’t very good, I was very busy, and it was kind of stressful period of time for me. And it just seemed like I thought it was an interesting world that nobody had written about. Then when I met Ryan and Brad, Ryan had also been in glee clubs and he had actually been in it through college, which is a whole other world of just nerdiness, wonderful nerdiness. So it was kind of the three of us, me, Ryan, and Brad, all kind of collectively bringing our high school experiences to it. So it’s more an amalgam than anything; it was more just having been a part of that world, such a niche little microcosm, I think, of what a high school experience is and what like the American experience is I guess.
Do you think you guys will have some original material featured on the series in the future?
BF: We plan on it. I think maybe in season two there’s a thought about doing some of that. Again, like I said, the key with us is what’s the story right now and what do we want to say right now and what’s going on with these characters right now. And so there was thought about doing that in the back nine, but then it sort of didn’t fit in. And so there’s certainly thoughts of doing that in season two. Ryan is sort of the music genius of the show and he manages all the music, and if he says that he’s thinking about us doing it then I believe him that he thinks about us doing it. So he’s been saying that we’ll probably do that in the back nine, so I do think we would do that episode. Yes.
IB: The music always comes out of the writer’s room, that we never have a song and then try to cram it in or write a story around that. But it’s the other way around; it always has to service the story first, which I think is actually what helps. And how it helps it, what makes the music integrate well into the stories, is that’s the direction we come at it.
THE BACK NINE (**SOME SPOILERS**)
The back nine episodes seem to sort of focus on how Finn will try to win Rachel back. What will we see from that?
BF: Well the Finn/Rachel relationship is obviously a core to the show. It’s something that’s really sort of important because it’s the bridge of the two worlds that really in the pilot we were trying to put together, which was this sort of popular jock boy with this unique Glee girl. She represents Glee and he represents the rest of the world. And so we always are going to explore that relationship in many different ways, and it’s going to be a push and a pull in that sometimes it’s going to be him going after her and sometimes it’s going to be her going after him, and they’re always going to sort of be watching each other from afar. No matter what’s going on in their lives they’ll always have one eye on the other one. So we’ll see a bunch of that, and then by the end, I think by episode 22 of the back 9, so episode 9 of the last 9, we’ll reach a really temporary conclusion to that.
Well everyone’s favorite couple seems to be Puck and Rachel. What can you tell us of the developments between them that we’ll see in the back nine?
BF: Well every good girl likes a bad boy, and there’s nobody more good than Rachel and nobody no more bad than Puck. So we had no idea it was going to be quite so popular, those two. We did it, sort of again like I said, we shot all those episodes in a bubble, and so we didn’t know that putting them in a relationship was really going to make people so excited. So we go back and explore that a little bit in the back nine, and like I said, we’ll continue to explore it. It’s high school, and everybody is always bouncing around to everybody else in high school, so that won’t stop.
Can you talk about how the Brittany character developed?
IB: Heather Morris is just a total comic genius. Her background is mostly with … But I forget, Brad, how it worked, but I think like occasionally we would just kind of toss her a few lines, and then they ended up being so shockingly hilarious. And then randomly being able to pair her with kind of this twosome in Heather’s character and then Naya’s character, Santana, they’re like this kind of weird, wonderful, brilliant, comedic duo that we stumbled upon, which was totally not really intentional. It’s such a gift to have them; they’re both really good and really funny. They’re absolutely my favorite stuff to write now.
So are you writing more towards them in these back nine?
BF: Definitely. Yes. I mean a little bit. They have some stories. I know Naya gets to sing in the back nine. We have such an incredibly talented cast that a lot of stuff comes out of just sort of being with them and seeing what they do and seeing what they’re good at and seeing what makes the laugh and what about them makes us laugh. Someone like Heather is so brilliantly funny and had never really acted before, and yet is so brilliantly funny and brings something so special that it started really entertaining us to start putting her in there and giving her stuff, and it sort of really developed out of that.
You did an excellent job of giving us a 13th episode that could have been the conclusion if you hadn’t had more episodes, but it sort of felt like you had to back up and start again kind of.
BF: I think a lot of people will be reintroduced to the show when we premier in April, because we’re after Idol so we wanted to sort of restart things and reboot things. But regionals are sort of coming up, and regionals are against much tougher competition – Vocal adrenaline – so we had to reset a little bit and let people know really where they still stand. I think that was the right thing to do, and I think we can then build to another really striking conclusion at the end of the nine.
Jane Lynch [once] said that there was no way she was going to sing on the show. How did you talk her into it?
BF: We just gave her the script. It was in the Madonna episode, which is truly, I think, probably our most spectacular episode to date. It is truly a spectacular that you watch and you can’t believe you’re watching a television show. And when she saw it and saw what she’d be doing she was so excited. And then when you see her do this Vogue and it is … awesome. It’s incredible. So it wasn’t hard.
Can you talk a little bit about Will and Emma and what we’ll see with them coming up?
IB: It’s great. That’s another kind of one of the relationships that we kind of I actually had no idea how much people were going to love that and how much we enjoyed writing that. And another one where’s there’s kind of a lot of that’s a very complicated relationship, and there is a lot of push and pull that you can tell kind of two people who want to be together and kind of struggle to get through because of their own issues. So we deal with it a lot in the back nine.
A lot of people loved the moment when Mark Salling as Puck did Sweet Caroline. Is there going to be another such moment with him in this season singing solo, any in this part of the season?
BF: Yes, he does. Mark has really taken that character, and again he’s humanized it in a way that has really given it a lot of dimension and made it really fun to write. And so Mark has a lot of very focused stories in the back nine, and so yes, he’ll have plenty of moments. Because again, it’s like we have talent like that, where a guy looks like that and he can sing like that and he just has a very easy sort of movie star charm about him and an accessibility, you want to write towards that. So yes, he’ll have plenty of stuff. Puck’s hands will get plenty of Puck in them.
Does Mercedes get a love interest again now that she doesn’t have Kurt?
IB: Mercedes is irresistible, so she’ll get a couple of suitors certainly.
GUEST STARS
What can you tell us about Neil Patrick Harris when he was on, either how he interacted with the cast or how he took to the character? What characteristics of him can we expect to see in this character?
BF: The guy’s a frigging genius; he’s awesome. Everybody loved him, everybody loved working with him, he was delightful, he was easy. I mean he was all the things you want him to be, and he just brought something. When we were writing the character we were like “oh my God what if for some reason Neil gets too busy and can’t do it. No one else can play this character; we’ll have to rewrite the whole episode.”
IB: He was fantastic, especially on the dailies. He was really, really good. Yes, he was really excited about what we had written for him and it was just a perfect mix. And then Joss Whedon, who is of Buffy and of Doll House, directed that episode and they had worked together on the Dr. Horrible, so they had a great rapport. And I’m really excited to see the cut of that episode, because I think it’s going to be really, really good and really funny. There’s some great stuff in that episode, so that should be a good one. [You will see him] singing, dancing, acting, being funny; all the things that make him great. Just incredibly charming and endearing and singing.
Do you think we would be able to see his character again? Would you bring him back?
BF: Again, it’s the same thing with Kristin. You have talents like that it’s very hard to not want them back. The one advantage we have is that I think we have so many incredibly talented people in our regular cast that guest actors we don’t need them as much. But there are certain very special people that of course you’d always be interested in, but you never know is what I say.
Obviously the script is the script. I’m just wondering are there any special Joss Whedon-isms that came when he directed the episode. While we watch an episode are there going to be any moments that bring Joss to us?
BF: I think the [essence] of Joss is he’s so uniquely talented that when any great director directs something, even when it’s something they weren’t involved in the writing of, you can always see that director in it. I shouldn’t say you can see…you can feel that director in it. And he was incredibly reverent and respectful of the material, because he loves the show, and we were also very reverent and respectful of him because we think he’s such a genius. So I think you’ll see a great combination of those two things together.
IB: Yes, he’s really detail oriented and smart too. And some of the things he would, I just noticed, little tiny, little grace notes that he added to stuff that we hadn’t thought of were just fantastic ideas. I was very, very impressed with him. There’s a reason why that guy is as well known and as well respected as he is.
You have some guest stars coming up, including Idina and Kristin returning, but also I’ve heard about J-Lo and stuff like that.
BF: J-Lo will not be on this season, but Neil Patrick Harris will be, and he’s amazing. And who else? Anybody else coming in there? Michael O’Malley will be back, who is just playing Kurt’s dad, who is just honestly just the biggest gift we could get. He’s truly extraordinary and really humanizes both those characters, I think, with what he did with Kurt’s father. That’s been a real grounding relationship in the show is Kurt and his dad. And Idina is incredible and the episode with Kristin in it, I think, is maybe our best one yet. It’s called Home; it’s the third one back, and it’s really so moving and hilarious. She is obviously Kristin, so you kind of can’t keep your eyes off her.
Did you have any temptation to try and get Idina Menzel and Kristin [Chenoweth] in the same episode?
BF: You know it didn’t work for the storytelling, so it really wasn’t necessary. We always, with all that stuff, it’s always story first, what’s the story, what’s the story, what’s the story, and then we kind of go from there about can we get so and so the play that character, are they available, would they be even interested in doing that. When you people like Idina and Kristin, who are such mega talent stars, you have to sort of get them just the right thing and you want to really treat them right. So it never really came up.
The spring premiere of Glee is tonight on FOX at 9:28 PM.
Farrah Kaye – Associate Editor
farrah@thetwocentscorp.com
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