Ryan Murphy Reveals More about Season 4 of Glee

Filed by Cheryl | May 24, 2012

Ryan Murphy co -creator of Glee keeps pouring out more information about Season 4. Is he worried that no one will watch it?  We think that he is wanting to give the fans more of what they have been asking for! Lets see what else we can learn about Season 4 of Glee.

Ryan Murphy has never been known for keeping his schedule light. In addition to running Glee and American Horror Story, planning to direct a feature-film adaptation of Larry Kramer's AIDS drama The Normal Heart, and writing the all-star musical One Hit Wonders for pal Gwyneth Paltrow, Reese Witherspoon, and Cameron Diaz, he now will also run The New Normal, a new NBC comedy premiering this fall about a gay couple who decide they want to start a family.

At the beginning of this season of Glee, you said no big tributes, no guest stars. But the truth is, you began doing both in the second half of the season. What happened there? Do you feel pulled in both directions?
I don’t feel that I’m pulled in those directions. And you know, the first season, which now everyone has put a halo on, did exactly that: We had guest stars, we had the Madonna tribute. .. I think the thing about the fan base is you can’t take anything too personal because it all comes from a place of passion. There are some people who love the characters. There are other groups of people who love the spectacle. When you do the spectacle, the people who love the characters get pissed. “Fuck them, why aren’t they doing a Brittany and Santana story instead of a Michael Jackson celebration?” Then when you do the opposite they’re like, “You know, where’s the tribute to Frank Sinatra? This is bullshit.” You just can’t win. So I think you try to do the best that you can, and I really do respect the fans, because I think it’s a young audience, and I think it’s a very Internet-savvy audience. We care about the show and we care about the characters and the tributes, but it’s a young, rollicking show by design. I get that sometimes people fall in and out of love with it in the course of two episodes.

It’s also hard when you do a show that no one thought would work — even the people who ran the network did not think it would work. Some of the critics thought it was gonna be five episodes then out. And I think that it’s a show that the fans made. They found it, they loved it, they bought the music, they turned it into a phenomenon, they bought the tickets for those concert tours, they created the ability to do multi-platforms, they had a really strong proprietary grasp on it. I think the critics did, too, and I think a lot of the bloggers did. So whenever you have something like that, and then you evolve and you grow and you try different things and you experiment and you risk, [they say] “We don’t like it, go back to what you used to do.” And then you say “Well, we are kind of doing what we used to do, but I understand how you would see it was different.”

I will say the story for season four gets back to the underdog status [for the characters] and that will appease people, maybe. Sometimes I feel that you can’t win. It’s just a volatile group of people that watch it, and for that, I like their passion. Anybody who’s ever done a show about youth has told me they went through this exact same thing.

What did you think of Fox entertainment president Kevin Reilly saying next season would be a “creative renaissance” for the show at the network’s upfront?

I don’t think that Kevin was particularly a fan of what I was trying to do with the beginning of this season. We did an episode of all show tunes, we did several of them. There was the West Side Story thing that I loved, but I don’t think the audience did. Kevin wants a Glee that’s about Top 40, pop culture, big stars. So I know that he loved the end of this season, and I went and pitched him the next season and I think he loves it because it’s very pop-culture-based. We’re doing a great tribute right off the bat, another Britney Spears episode. Many of the characters will be starting over as underdogs, which is a good thing for the show. I really made an effort, talking to all the regulars about it.

What do you mean?
We had a meeting, and you know that we’ve become like a family, and I said to them anybody who wants to stay on the show will stay on the show. I asked all of them, “What do you want to do? What are you interested in doing?” That said, the show next year will have less characters than we’ve ever had and I think that’s a good thing. But I don’t think that you’ll see a show that suddenly you don’t recognize. A lot of people have been writing Dianna [Agron]’s off the show, Amber [Riley]’s off the show — they’re not off the show.

You know why they’re saying that about Amber, though. Amber tweeted that she had “closed a chapter” of her life.
I think she was talking about a bittersweet feeling of, "I’ll never be in the choir room with that exact group of people." At least that’s what she told me. When I read that [tweet], I said, "I think people will misconstrue that.” She's excited about where her character is going. They all are. I wanted to do the right thing by all of them. I think that was the problem in the media last year when people thought that I was getting rid of Lea [Michele], Cory [Monteith], and Chris [Colfer] because I couldn’t talk about the spinoff. “Oh, you’re getting rid of my beloved characters? Fuck you, I hate you, how dare you.”

I wanted the actors to know that if they wanted to have a home, they have a home. If they want to explore new and different things while having a home, that’s also an option. When I told them about the next season, they liked it because they all get to grow and be back to struggling, [wondering] where is my place in the world. I think that the fans of the show will grow up with them.

What about Will Schuester? Do you feel like there are more stories to tell for him, especially since he’s about to become happily married?
He doesn’t get married.

Spoilers!
[Laughs.] We have really good things planned for Matt [Morrison], and we have really good things planned for Jane [Lynch]. What I like is they will no longer be playing the same stories. Jane needs to get a new enemy and fast. Same for Matt. Matt has to have a new challenge and a new thing. We did not want to repeat the formula we’ve done. The show will be very different, but I think very satisfying.


So, Jayma Mays, Mark Salling ... everyone is coming back?

They’re all coming back. Anybody who was a regular is coming back. Everyone said yes. That doesn’t mean everyone will be doing 22 episodes, but everybody wants to stay in our family, in our world. But there will never be a day where you’ll see another Glee tour with all those same people. That won’t happen.

What do you think of Glee moving to Thursdays after The X Factor?

I think it’s a really great night of television. I love Britney. I think Britney’s going to bring a lot of eyes to that screen and the flow of a musical show into a musical show is great. It’s always what I wanted. I’d been begging for that for two years. I wanted to be on after American Idol or X Factor just because when I’m watching Idol, and I’m having a fun, young pop-culture experience, I don’t want to watch a hard drama after. Thursday is going to be a night of pop-culture celebration for Fox. There’s gonna be a lot of tie-ins that we’re gonna do. I also love that we’re gonna be at nine, which we were before, because I think we can go back to a little bit more [mature] writing. We’re doing that.

Both Glee and your new show, The New Normal, are set in Ohio.

Well, I’m from Indiana. So to me when I was a little kid growing up, Cincinnati was the glamorous New York of it all. But after the first episode of The New Normal, everyone moves to L.A., so there’s no more Ohio. The surrogate Goldie comes out to try and go to law school in L.A., and grandma isn’t going to let her do that alone, so she also comes out. She’s got a real estate license, so she’s going to be selling condos. I really love Ellen Barkin’s character Jane, this idea of women in their forties and fifties who are now single and having second lives.

Three TV shows and two movies … how do you stay focused with so many ongoing projects?

I don’t know how to answer that other than I just have a passion for all of them. They feed each other. I never get bored; I’m always excited. It just feels like a very circular gerbil wheel of creativity, to be quite honest. I started off as a journalist when I was young and I did not get paid unless I wrote three stories a day. So I was brought up with that mentality, that productivity was a good thing. And I do have a great support system and bosses who understand.

And will you be the showrunner for all three of your series?

Yes. I’m still the showrunner, but Brad Falchuk [co-creator and co-executive producer on Glee and American Horror Story] is working really closely with those writing staffs. And we’re bringing on people to Glee who have run other shows, so that’s very helpful. Ali Adler co-created The New Normal and has run and staffed many rooms before. That show also will have a very overexperienced staff that we’re bringing on.

How do you feel Gleeks that Season 4 is looking on Glee?

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TAGS: Ryan Murphy, Fulchuk, Glee, Brad