In one of modern television’s biggest twists, Glee’s music teacher Will Schuster was originally penned for Justin Timberlake.
The musical series Glee was a television powerhouse back when it premiered in 2009. Combining modern songs with every high school soap trope conceived, it ran 121 episodes and went onto win 6 Emmy’s.
If you were a fan of the series, you would recall the friendly but somewhat naive music teacher Will Schuster as played by Matthew Morrison.
Well, series creator Ryan Murphy has just revealed that he originally wrote the character for Justin Timberlake.
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“When we were writing the pilot – I’ve never really talked about this – that pilot was written for Justin Timberlake,” Murphy said on the And That’s What You REALLY Missed podcast. “Mr. Schue was written for Justin.”
Also revealed was that the original plan was for the series to be much darker than what ended up airing. Part of this was that Schue would be a drug addict and that he had inappropriately touched students.
Murphy went on to explain that his friend and co-writer, Ian Brennan originally pitched this grimer version to him at the gym.
“I went to the gym and I was in a towel and a guy went up and handed me a script he said, ‘I had a feeling you were in a show choir, am I right?’ and I was like ‘yeah’,” said Murphy.
“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.”
The series that ended up airing was definitely not this loaded. It was more loaded in the way of a cheerleader cheats on her boyfriend and gets pregnant.
However, if they want to do another series of Glee where Schue has completely lost the plot and is a drug addict, I will definitely give it a watch.
Check out the full podcast here!
