Glee’s Kevin McHale Recalls On-Set Incident That Left Crew “Shocked”
The Glee ensemble was really shocking their staff. As Kevin McHale, who portrayed Artie in all six seasons of the musical series, revealed, the first season took crew members on an amazing experience as they watched McHale sing Salt-n-Pepa's "Push It" alongside his costars Lea Michele, Chris Colfer, Jenna Ushkowitz, Amber Riley, and the late Cory Monteith.
On September 3, McHale uploaded a video of the performance on his X account and said, “Filming this for a shocked crew is still one of my favorite memories of my entire life.”
In the scenario in question, which took place in the second episode of the show, the glee club was getting ready to perform in front of their classmates. They had originally planned to perform "Le Freak," but Michele's Rachel Berry felt they needed something a little sexier, thus "Push It" was chosen. The gang sang and danced in a very suggestive way, keeping their teacher Will Schuester (Matthew Morrison) in the dark about their scheme.
Register for the next Tekedia Mini-MBA.
Register for Tekedia AI in Business Masterclass.
Join Tekedia Capital Syndicate and co-invest in great global startups.
Naturally, Glee fans were thrilled to discover what it was like to work on the show behind the scenes.
“Crew members finding out in real time is the only way to experience glee honestly,” only one individual answered. Someone else said, “Oh to have been a crew member on this show,,,,probably extremely stressful but holy s--t it would’ve been so worth it to see s--t like this.”
One user pondered, “Meanwhile it ended up being not even the wildest scene in Glee.”
And the scene clearly made its imprint, with something else writing, “You have no idea how much this scene changed my life as a teenager. Glee was a cultural reset.”
Even though Glee's broadcast run ended eleven years ago, it still plays a significant role in popular culture discussions. Even though the cast enjoys revisiting some moments, they have also had to deal with more negative aspects of the show's history. In particular, the discussion about whether there is a Glee "curse" in light of Monteith's 2013 drug overdose death, Mark Salling's 2018 suicide death, and Naya Rivera's 2020 accidental drowning death.
McHale is among the numerous people who disagree with the idea, though.
“Let me log off today because the way too many of you talk about real people who have passed as a ‘sacrifice’ or a ‘curse’ in regards to a tv show is f--king diabolical and untethered from any sort of humanity or reality,” in July, the 38-year-old wrote on X. “Get f--ked.”
Nevertheless, he and his fellow Glee co-stars have made an effort to deal with the tragedies they have encountered in their own unique ways, including making fun of the concept.
“We make jokes about a curse, which makes a lot of people uncomfortable,” in 2024, he appeared on the Elvis Duran Show. “The amount of times we've said some things that everyone gets really quiet, we're like, ‘No no, you [don’t] understand, if we don't laugh about this, we will all just be sad.’”
Uploaded files: