Kevin McHale & Jenna Ushkowitz on Reviving Glee Recap Podcast

Hello, kevin, how are you?

Hello. I'm good. How are you doing?

Great. I'm so excited to talk to you guys.

Thanks for having us?

Yes, thank you.

How often you get to see each other in person?

Pretty often. Yeah, yeah, pretty often.

We go eat. We stuff our faces a lot together.

That okay, so you have your podcast back and that's what you really missed, right about. How do you feel having it now back, You said you had so many social media, like people reach out and have demands to bring it back. So now that your first episodes out with Ryan Murphy, how do you feel that it's first episode back.

I mean, is there any other way to kick it off? But with Ryan Murphy, you know, insane because obviously we didn't know who the guest was going to be ahead of time. So when it dropped, I was like, oh, they started big, like they were, that was the plan.

That was the plan. Yeah, we're really excited about it. Honestly, we, you know, we're going in with a fresh set of eyes and different, a different perspective obviously. So, um, I think it'll be a different vibe, which is cool. Yeah, and jen has mentioned this before too, I think, and like you mentioned if it weren't for the people operating us on social media, I don't know if we would have brought it back. So I'm glad that they were persistent and passionate and we heard them and we saw them and here we are.

Thank God for social media. Really pushing you guys right, Right.

Sometimes good things happen. That's right, that's right.

And for speaking of social media, do you think if Tiktok was around when Glee was airing, how different do you think we would have turned out?

Oh my gosh! Can you imagine the amount of like Tiktok dances and things? We would have done ugly? It was a different time. I don't know how people well and the fact that the creators really did listen to the fans a lot. Um it's like a whole nother level, right? Like it's a whole nother level of incorporating the social media aspect and the wishes of the fans and there's a lot of buzz going around? Um obviously Olivia Rodrigo blew up because of talk and stuff like that. Her song, Do you think by now there would have been an Olivia Rodrigo's, our audience loves Olivia Rodrigo and Olivia Rodrigo episode on Glee. Do you think he would have covered her by now?

Hands down Yeah, immediately on top of that, it sounds like that song was made for Glee. Are you kidding me? It's emotional. There's a story. There is singing like we love it. Yes.

Yeah.

And you've had a lot of guests. So you had Ryan Murphy on your first episode so far? What can you tell fan that? Do you have any special guests in store for upcoming episodes? Have you filmed them already? Are you going to invite, what are you going to invite on?

We're not too far ahead yet, but we are thinking ahead, that's for sure. Um we're definitely gonna have some alum, we even had some people text this morning that were like excited and you know, congratulating us on the podcast, free lunch and um we're like, well you gotta come on the show and um you know, we were talking to like dot Marie jones and you know, all like of our amazing, amazing cast and then I think in this inception of the podcast, we really want to dig into um the pop culture aspect and what was going on in the world as we and that impact and so, you know, we'd love to talk to celebrity fans that grew up with Glee and um you know, we'd love to have some of the artists that we covered on the show as well if they'll come on. So we're really excited to kind of branch out this time and, and um you know, bring in some really cool people.

Yeah, you sound like you have a good, you have a good mindset of, we're hopeful and for your first round of podcast and now this podcast you said also in the intro, you're really gonna get behind the scenes and really talk about topics that people are constantly asking you about. So what is the one thing that people you see are asking you the most and should they expect it on future episodes?

Oh, I think something we want to do um one of the things that will address, there's a lot of weird tiktok conspiracy glee things and glee talk and we're going to get into sort of debunking or I guess verifying that some of these things are true, mostly not true. Um some of these like weird blind item things and a lot of them are like weird, it's very, very strange um and so I think that will be a fun thing to actually address and talk about because especially because the show has been off for a while now, these things get crazier and crazier. I think the further you get away from the truth of it all in the time since the show was on, so being able to go in and dissect that weird stuff will be fun.

Yeah, I also think, I'm like a more serious note I think talking about um and Ryan touched on it, like the mental health aspect of all of it, like um mental health in the workplace, in the workplace is much more um I would say uh prominent and it's, it is like an actual um it's own entity now, right? And um we didn't have that in and in Hollywood, it's such a hustle culture that you don't, you always say yes, you are always on the go, you're always searching for the next thing and um you know the hours are just so long and tenuous and so I think um really kind of looking into what, what that would have looked like if we were doing this in 2022 what we might have done differently. I think it's something we really want to talk about as well.

Yeah, which is important because you see with the tweets and stuff like people have a demand for that, like they want to know what it was really like behind the scenes, totally, totally and with the docuseries news like dropping, were you guys aware of that was going to happen or did you find social media? Like everybody else?

No, we had heard inklings of of it. Yeah, I think they tried to get some of us to do it. I just think for us, it makes, you know what we're doing now more important because um, to sort of steal some of Jenna's words here, you know, we were actually there and were involved and um, I think something like that sounds like it's just going to, for lack of a better term to be honest. It sounds like trauma porn, like I don't, I don't know what, like they weren't there, we lived this experience and a lot of it was just most of it was a really positive, like joyous thing, like we got to go to work and make people laugh and we got to sing and dress up in these crazy costumes a lot of the time and so yeah, I think there's a difference between people who are trying to do a some weird gossipy thing and then there's the real experience and so it made us even more excited to, to do this and to talk openly and truthfully about what really happened because a lot of it's not as, we just don't even know who's really actually like part of a part of that at all. So yeah,

From your memory, what was your absolute favorite to this day? Seeing that each of you film only, there were so many iconic things like I literally, you know, the merch that people had like Woodley, like there's so much merch, I religiously never took it off the whistle from Glee, like two years, like that was my life funny.

Um I gotta tell you as much as I hated it. No, no, the whole week we did gaga versus Katie and like that whole week we were in like the most insane costumes. Um I just like, I hated it, but I loved it. I also that weak was very out of like I was in this very odd, uncomfortable contraption doing the art pop makeup, but I had the time of my life too because it's, you have like permission to do gaga, like you can just be so crazy and full out because you're still not gonna match her level and that getting to do things like that, like getting to watch each other um perform in those ways you wouldn't normally get to see it was always a treat.

You guys so many iconic, seems like I can't even imagine if it was still obviously it would be the longest running show ever, but like imagine like now like the culture and like even then like you guys were on top of it, like you were on

Yes, that's alright and yeah, we don't, I don't even know where we would begin.

If you could play any other character from Glee who wanted to play.

I've been asked this question this morning as well and I said um Emma Pillsbury, but I'm going to change it for this one so I can play all the different characters um Gosh, I think I think for a moment Quinn Fabray sounds really fun.

I'm going to say Tina just because I think it has been so fun. It's like so opposite of me personally, so much fun to do. Give me the blue hair extensions. I love it. Season one, Tina Season one.

Yeah, If you could cast any current day celebrity as like you said there was like a reboot and someone had to play you, What celebrity would you? Oh my God, that very hard.

I don't know it's me but I would want to see Ariana, I want to see Zendaya on the show, like she wouldn't obviously not play RT but or maybe if the euphoria cast could just do a glee episode, I would drop in for that. Oh my God, imagine like that just like mesh together euphoria in glee in very Ryan Murphy and it's very Ryan Murphy.

The entire Internet. That would be absolutely insane. Well, thank you guys so much and congratulate. I'm so glad the podcast is back in the episode. I'm halfway through the first one, so I can't wait to see what it's like working out.

I was like, okay, later, thank you.

Thank you so much. Bye!