Ryan Murphy reveals the original Glee script had Mr Schue as a crystal meth addict

The hit musical show Glee could have been a very different series.

Creator Ryan Murphy sat down with Glee stars Kevin McHale, who played Artie Abrams, and Jenna Ushkowitz, who played Tina Cohen-Chang, for the first episode of their new podcast And That's What You REALLY Missed to reveal that the affable character of Mr. William 'Schue' Schuester, was originally going to be addicted to crystal meth.

"We were having these conversations and I was trying to figure it out,” Murphy said as per Insider.

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"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'. And he said, 'My friend wrote this script and you should read it'."

Obviously, the Glee showrunner agreed to read the script and thought it had something... but it was just too dark.

Like way too dark, with Mr Schue being a raving meth head.

"Mr. Schue, I believe, was a crystal meth addict in [the original] script," Murphy said.

"The NC-17 version of show choir with a weird protagonist who was unraveling."

NC-17 is the highest rating in the Motion Picture Association film rating system used for movies distributed in the United States.

Murphy added that the show needed something more 'optimistic'.

The showrunner agreed to work with the script and transformed it into the show that fans know today.

But that wasn't the only interesting tidbit that the co-creator dropped on McHale and Ushkowitz's podcast.

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He told his two former cast members that Mr Schue was written for Justin Timberlake.

"When we were writing the pilot, I’ve never really talked about this, that pilot was written for Justin Timberlake," Murphy revealed, as per Insider.

He then rammed the point home and added: "Mr Schue was written for Justin."

Well, just like the character having an addiction to a Class A substance, that didn't go ahead either.

The character of Mr Schue, a Spanish teacher who forms a show choir in his school, went to Matthew Morrison instead.

So, let's take a moment to dream about what could have been.

That version of Glee would have been totally bonkers, even more so than what audiences actually got.

The second half of Ryan Murphy's interview on And That's What You REALLY Missed will air in the podcast's second episode.

Topics: TV and Film

Rachel Lang

Rachel Lang is a Digital Journalist at LADbible. During her career, she has interviewed Aussie PM Malcolm Turnbull in the lead up to the 2016 federal election, ran an editorial campaign on the war in Yemen, and reported on homelessness in the lead-up to Harry and Meghan’s wedding in Windsor. She also once wrote a yarn on the cheese and wine version of Fyre Festival.

@rlangjournalist