Glee creator Ryan Murphy sat down to talk with two former cast members, Kevin McHale (Artie Abrams) and Jenna Ushkowitz (Tina Cohen-Chang), on their podcast And That’s What You REALLY Missed. During the chat, the television writer reveals the original script was much darker than the cheeky, lighthearted version we know today.
Murphy said after reading his co-creator Ian Brennan’s original script, he felt the show was the perfect musical idea for a show, but it was just “too dark” for network television, Variety reports.
Murphy also revealed that the show’s popular character Mr. Shue was initially written for Justin Timberlake and intended that the character was a “crystal meth addict.”
“Mr. Schue, I believe, was a crystal meth addict in Ian’s script,” Murphy said. “The NC-17 version of show choir with a weird protagonist who was unraveling… I just need something optimistic.” The series premiered in 2009 and had a six-season run before ending in 2015.
Recently, Murphy and Brennan came together with another collaboration, with Netflix’s Monster: The Jeffery Dahmer Story. The show, which premiered back in September, treks through the life of one of America’s prolific serial killers, Jeffery Dahmer. Throughout the ten-episode series, we see Dahmer struggle with his obsession with blood and mayhem before ultimately getting caught in 1991.