Justin Timberlake almost played a meth-addicted Mr. Schuester.
We have former Glee stars Kevin McHale and Jenna Ushkowitz to thank for this dark revelation, as Glee creator Ryan Murphy revealed that he originally wrote Mr. Schuester for Justin Timberlake, not eventual star Matthew Morrision, on their podcast And That's What You REALLY Missed.
And That's What You REALLY Missed is a new podcast from Ushkowitz and McHale (who starred as Tina Cohen-Chang and Artie Abrams on the show) where they'll recap the beloved, but controversial, series they starred in, revealing new secrets from the people who made the show.
Ushkowitz and McHale were asking Murphy, the guest on their first episode, about casting for the pilot episode of Glee when he dropped the big news.
"When we were writing the pilot - I've never really talked about this - that pilot was written for Justin Timberlake," he revealed. "Mr. Schue was written for Justin."
But that's not all! Murphy also explained that the original version of Mr. Schue would've been much darker.
The Emmy-winning director and producer said on the podcast that the show was originally created because he was talking with Fox about making a musical show for the network when a man approached him in a gym and offered him a script that would turn into Glee.
"Like serendipity, I went to the gym and I was in a towel and a guy went up and handed me a script and he said, 'I had a feeling you were in show choir, am I right?' And I was like 'Yeah,'" Murphy recalled. "And he said, 'My friend wrote this script and you should read it.'"
That script, written by Ian Brennan, would later turn into Glee.
However, Murphy said that the original script was much darker than the Glee we got. "Mr. Schue, I believe, was a crystal meth addict in Ian's script. The NC-17 version of show choir with a weird protagonist who was unraveling."
Murphy asked Brennan to rewrite the script, making it more "pop-y" and "optimistic," "not dark."
The bomb came at the end of the episode, with McHale and Ushkowitz teasing that they'll reveal more about the casting for the character in next week's episode when the interview continues.
