Infamous Interviews: Glee Gone Wild...Part 1

[frejasface]

With Lea Michele in the news for being cast in Broadway's "Funny Girl" and allegedly not being able to read, why don't we take a look at her most infamous interviews ever? Actually, these interviews aren't just hers, though I'm sure she's prefer to think of it that way. They are all the Glee cast members'. These interviews took place in 2010 and 2011 for GQ and Rolling Stone, respectively.

(You will also notice that it's only the white cast members who are covered. Naya Rivera, Amber Riley, Harry Shum Jr., and Jenna Ushkowitz are ignored.)

The first interview in this two-part series is from Rolling Stone in April, 2010. This one went pretty viral back in the day. Not only because of the popularity of Glee, but because of the notoriously rude questions that the writer, Erik Hedegaard, who also once contributed a profile of John Mayer for Rolling Stone, btw, asked them.


Glee Gone Wild
By Erik Hedegaard
Rolling Stone, April 2010



First off, Hedegaard starts by demanding that they "entertain" him. When the cast apparently fails to live up to this demand by clapping like seals for his rude questions, he writes a very passive-aggressive profile about them.

• But would they be willing to entertain us? No big deal, right, since it's what they do for a living? So we asked. And right around then is when all the trouble started, with hard feelings, cold shoulders, averted eyes and dewy sniffling involved, just as if they were about to act out a particularly gooey sentimental scene in Glee -- or were right back in the hell halls of high school itself.

By the way, he also insufferably insists on using the royal "we" instead of the first-person "I."

He is sooo bitchy about Lea Michele being an annoying theater girl, which is honestly delightful.

• Her infectious good cheer is a little rattling. She's just so darn peppy!... At the very least, she's terrifically theatrical, in the best upbeat, no-worries sort of way.

Lolololol!

Once he gets Lea relaxed by talking about her career, he asks the first weird question, apropos of nothing:
"So...Do you pee in the shower?"
She freezes. For a second it looks like her bushy black eyebrows might drop off in shock. Then she regroups. "I don't talk about stuff like that," she says without a trace of peppiness.
As it happens, she also doesn't want to talk about what she wears to bed ("That's private!"), or if she favors thongs ("I wear boy shorts, OK?").Huh, why wouldn't an actress be peppy when asked questions about her underwear and piss?

This passage is an excellent instance of how a woman in Hollywood might get a reputation as cold or a diva because she refuses to entertain a man's whims:

• Frustrated, we flap our hands and demand honest-to-God proof. "Entertain us!" we shout.
  "That's what I do for a living," she says firmly. "Now we just get to have coffee."
  "No. You have to entertain us!"
  "It's not going to happen. I've done a very good job of entertaining you for the past hour. You're not going to ask me again, are you? Oh, give me a break."

When the writer demands that Corey Monteith entertain him, Corey bangs out a drum solo on some cups and plates, which the writer deems "disappointing." Here are some more questions he asks:

• "Ever made out with a guy?"
  "No! That's intense, man. That's a question I was not expecting."
  "So, are you making the rounds with the ladies?"
  "No, man. I try to stay out of it. I try to behave maturely."

By the time the interviewer meets with Dianna Agron, she has braced herself. And labels her uptight for it.

• Murphy calls her "a breezy free spirit," but right now she seems pretty uptight. And for good reason. She knows all about our halls-of-high-school line of questioning and has come ready to parry our every puerile feint and dodge.

She flips the script on him, and he is salty about it.

• Halfheartedly, we ask her to entertain us. She refuses, then says, "OK, roar like a tiger."
  "Who, us?" She nods and we do, loudly, after which she sort of roars herself, softly. It's all very lame. We kind of feel snookered."

Even though the writer makes a point about how prim and prissy she supposedly is, she drops a juicy blind item about a famous actor's son:

• "Fifteen minutes into dinner, he grabs my hand and goes, 'Let's go back to my place.' I think he's got to be kidding. I go, 'Excuse me?' And he goes, 'I bet I'm right about you, that you're very nice and very prim and proper right here at the table with your cute little dress on -- and that you're a freak in bed. So, let's go.' His father is a huge actor, so maybe this works for him all the time. I say, 'Please tell me you're kidding.' He goes, 'No, why would I be kidding?' I go, 'Oh, OK, well, I'm gonna go now.' He doesn't get up, doesn't do anything. I walk away and that's it."

I CAN'T. Who do we think it is, ONTD? The son of a famous actor who was young-ish enough to go on a date with Dianna, who was 23 in 2010.

Jane Lynch says that Harrison Ford once told her, "No matter how smart you are, when your mouth is hanging open like that, you look stupid. Close your mouth." She also says that penises are "one of the greatest things ever." When the guy demands that she entertain him, she says, "I am not your monkey."
She refuses to answer anything and instead hisses, "Why do you ask such stupid questions? Do you get off on that? Do you go home and think about it and jack off?"

When the writer finally visits the cast on the set after asking them such rude questions, he is shocked -- SHOCKED -- that they are cold to him.

• They laugh and giggle among themselves. They do not invite us to join them. At one point, Michele walks right by and doesn't even glance in our direction. [OP note: Just like Jessica Lange did to her!][ Then Agron, on the phone, looks straight at us and right through us. We are feeling incredibly awkward and unconfortable.
  In fact, we're feeling exactly like the characters in Glee felt... Alone, unworthy, unlovable, miserable, excluded. We are feeling totally weirded out and freaked out... They're a crowd, a clique.

Apparently, the writer even made some of the interviewees very upset behind the scenes. With all that aside, this style of writing does tend to give some gems. Like Corey Monteith blaming Dianna Agron for a fart. Or Matthew Morrison insisting on pronouncing ukelele as "ook-a-lay-lay."

And did you know that Lea Michele collected editions of Wuthering Heights because she thought Pat Benatar sang a song about it?

• "I like 'Wuthering Heights' because of the Pat Benatar song." Um...it was actually Kate Bush.

This is only PART 1 of the Infamous Interviews: Glee series, because there is another totally batshit off-the-wall profile and photoshoot from GQ to cover. Look for it next week!

[More infamous interviews] Julia Roberts, Megan Fox Taylor Swift, Rooney Mara, John Mayer, Britney Spears, Tom Hiddleston, 5 Seconds of Summer, Jessica Alba, Angelina Jolie, M.I.A., Chris Evans, Jennifer Lopez, Kate Winslet, Beyoncé, Channing Tatum, Cara Delevingne, Johnny Depp, Miles Teller, Courtney Love

[More famous photoshoots:] The Desperate Housewives cast, Teen stars, Beverly Johnson/Naomi Campbell, Drew Barrymore, The Beckhams, Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt.

Do you pee in the shower? What do you wear to bed? Do you prefer thongs?

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