Last night a slew of Glee stars appeared at Paleyfest in Los Angeles for a screening of the first part of next week’s 2 hour finale, titled “2009.” The story explores the origin story of Glee, giving fans a peek into events that motivated the original five-Rachel, Kurt, Mercedes, Artie and Tina–to join the choir.
There are tons of spoilers coming out of the screening, and if you want to know what happens before you watch the episode, click this link.
After the screening, the moderator, Tim Stack from Entertainment Weekly, led a panel discussion with the cast. Jane Lynch, Lea Michele, Chris Colfer, Amber Riley, Mark Salling, Heather Morris, Dot-Marie Jones, Darren Criss and Chord Overstreet reminisced about the seasons they spent on the show, shared set stories, and talked about the emotional last few days of filming.
Here are a couple of soundbites. Click Entertainment Tonight to read more quotes from the panel. Watch the entire hour long Q&A at the bottom of the page.
When Lea Michele sang the last solo of her Glee career — a song entitled, “This Time” written by Darren Criss — the actress had to call her mom to come and pick her up at the end of shooting because she was such a mess. “That was the day I feel to my knees and cried,” Michele said.
When the writers first approached Chris Colfer about writing an episode of Glee his first reaction was to turn them down. “I said, ‘Absolutely not, I’m not doing that!’… it was terrifying and there was a lot of pressure,” Colfer said before adding that he was happy he did it.
Mark Salling originally lied about his age in his Glee audition — he said he was 19, but he was really 26. Ryan Murphy finally called him out on this fib, but to Salling’s relief his older age was preferred for the role.
At the Paramount Lot, where they shot Glee, the WMHS auditorium was torn down shortly after production wrapped, but each of the cast members were given a tiny piece of the stage as their end of the series gift.
On the very last day of filming Amber Riley made the entire cast end their day by sitting in a circle on the auditorium stage, and they thanked each other for an amazing six years. “And Jonathan [Groff] cried the hardest,” Lea Michele added.
More bits from The Hollywood Reporter
[Chris] Colfer also praised [Cory] Monteith and, when asked to share a favorite memory of his on-screen step-brother, recalled that the duo often did press tours together and “always had accidental fun together. He was a very special guy,” Colfer said to an already emotional packed house. Monteith’s Finn Hudson was the show’s driving force in its representation of the underdog and inclusion. An explination for how Finn died has never been explained on-screen.
As for the final moments of production, leading lady [Lea] Michele recalled that after [Matt] Morrison’s final song performance had been completed, the “original members of the glee club” — [Lea] Michele, [Chris] Colfer, [Kevin] McHale, Jenna Ushkowitz, Chord Overstreet, [Darren] Criss and Becca Tobin — fell into “this big ball sobbing” after producers yelled that it was a series wrap on Glee.
PaleyFest Glee Panel (Via ChrisColferNews)
