Ryan Murphy and Chris Colfer Discuss "Glee", "Golden Globes" and more.

The very last set visit of this Television Critics Association tour was probably also the most anticipated by the critics — that being our trip to see Glee. After all, we were some of the very first folks to see a scene from the program when we were shown the poor Glee Club kids watching their rivals perform their version of Amy Winehouse's "Rehab." As soon as that clip finished, we critics started buzzing and haven't really stopped yet.

So we were pretty jazzed to see the set.

First we toured McKinley High School, Sue Sylvester's office, the teacher's lounge, and then Amber Riley (Mercedes) and Lea Michele (Rachel) each performed a song. That was followed by Glee creator Ryan Murphy and his cast answering questions from TCA members. (I asked this first question of Ryan after the panel was over.) 

Why is it important to you have a character like Kurt on television?

That was my relationship with my dad. My dad is six foot five, semi-pro hockey player and I was this little tow-headed Barbara Streisand loving kid and he would often say "I don't know how you came out of me." I don't see myself in you. And our relationship was often a tumultuous one.

But like Kurt, I was very strong and I was who I was and he respected that. And in me he finally saw a toughness and resolve that he admired. And in televsion we see a lot of gay characters who have to be brought to heel and beaten up and [be] sad and I didn't want to do that with Kurt becauswe I wasn't that way. He is very proud and very emotional.

The thing I love about him is that in Season 2, he's going to get a boyfriend and they are going to be a popular "It" couple. And that's very important to me. And what else is important  to me is that I hear from so many kids that because of the strength of that character, they have had the guts to tell their parents of their own feelings. So he's become a role model. And I never had a role model. I had what? Paul Lynde and Charles Nelson Reilly? We didn't have them. So if I'm in a position to make them, I'm going to and that's what I'm doing.

Chris Colfer on the highlight of the Golden Globes.

Sandra Bullock told me that she made her husband Jesse James watch the Single Ladies episode and the image of her making her tatted husband sit down and watch "Single Ladies" kills me.

Ryan Murphy on what winning the Golden Globe for Best New Show was like.

I thought last night felt incredibly, humbling and sweet and my favorite moment of it all was this, you know, that it was, you know we’re such a family and we sort of created this in a bubble, I mean we pretty much have shot everything before any episode had aired, so I just got up there and looked at all these faces I’ve loved for over a year and it felt, I was just so thrilled that they were seen and recognized for their talent.  I, I felt it was, very very sweet and I’d won it before, uh for Nip Tuck and it felt much more wholesome this time.

Jane Lynch on how people react to her now on the street.

It’s always very nice, no one has ever been mean to me.  That would be mean. I think its liberating for people to see someone so mean.  Because she is so extremely mean that she’s almost—it’s as if she had a moustache she’d be twirling it.  People love that.  It’s like what we wish we could do in moments in our life but social propriety says we shouldn’t and Sue does not have that filter and people get a big kick out of that.

The first 13 were about the road to sectionals.  The back 9 will be about the road to Regional’s [which will happen next year]. This year’s last episode we’ve been sort of building [Vocal Adrenaline] as this evil empire of the show choir world. Jonathan Groff, who’s joining the cast is playing the lead singer. It will be our guys versus Vocal Adrenaline.

Ryan Murphy on a Glee tour.

We are doing a tour. We’re touring.  I can’t say more about it, but there’s going to be an announcement in the next couple weeks, about dates and where we’re touring, but these guys are going to be busy little beavers.  We finish shooting in April and we’re gonna do a very select sort of small summer tour.

Dianna Agron on what's been the most memorable thing to happen so far.

When we went to the upfront in New York that was the first time we really experienced many, many people seeing it at once and walking down the street you saw people with balloons that were the size of people that said Glee on them.  You’d see billboards that were just landscaped across the city and it was surreal and that when it all just really started.

Fans meeting the cast in New York City

Ryan Murphy on stuntcasting and Olivia Newton John.

So you know what we’re doing with Olivia Newton John is a good example of that to move Jane’s character along that I think is very sort of fun and Jane and I have a very personal connection to Olivia in that we were both obsessed with her as children. [laughter].  And I told her she taught me how to sing.  My mother, when I was six years old, my mother bought one of her albums and I would play it over and over, so that was a very personal stunt casting to me

Ryan Murphy on when he felt the show took off.

I feel that the show took off, for me, creatively, when Brad directed ‘Preggers’ and then I think again when we did ‘Wheels’.  We are really writing episodes like these two episodes that are kind of snark and heart.   I was really thrilled to the audience’s reaction to the Kurt/ Dad storyline…I loved that.  I also loved the audience’s reaction to Jane’s sister.   When we did those we had no idea, so it’s not like we shot them and they aired right away.  It was months and months of them sitting in a can before they aired.  I loved that the audience is very invested in the heart of the show.