Inside the ‘Glee’ Cast’s Sake-Saturated Work Lunch-Turned-Dance Party That Inspired a Very Special Episode

It turns out the Glee cast inspired the very episode where their characters got drunk by partaking in some alcoholic beverages themselves.

On Sunday’s episode of the And That’s What You REALLY Missed podcast, hosts Kevin McHale and Jenna Ushkowitz recounted how the season 2 episode titled “Blame It on the Alcohol” came to be based on real events.

“We got drunk on set y’all, that’s why,” McHale, 35, teased before Ushkowitz, 37, explained: “We got caught having a dance party at base camp — where our trailers are — after going to lunch and having a little bit of some substances. And by substances I mean sake.”

“We went out, and I won’t name names. There was one person who was the ringleader. It wasn’t either of us … [they] started pushing us all to drink,” McHale revealed. “And we’re like ‘I don’t know if we should.’ Some of us partook more than others.”

“Then the producers came down and they partook in our dance party … but then went back and snitched on us and we got in trouble,” recalled Ushkowitz. “And they wrote an episode about it.”

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In the episode, the New Directions glee club was tasked with performing at the school assembly to promote Alcohol Awareness Week. Ironically, Lea Michele’s character Rachel decided to throw a house party where the entire group had too much to drink. Later on, the drunken antics ended with them throwing up onstage from being too intoxicated.

Along with the the cast’s off-camera game of Spin the Bottle, the writers incorporated several of the stars’ real-life mannerisms in their onscreen counterparts.

“There were a lot of our ‘isms’ in this entire thing. Where Santana mouths ‘Kiss me’ … She’s sort of making fun of herself,” he said of Naya Rivera’s ad-lib. “We’re making fun of each other in all of this.”

Heather Morris and Jenna Ushkowitz during the ‘Blame It on the Alcohol’ episode of ‘Glee’.

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Ushkowitz added that just like Rivera, Santana also said “No me gusta” in the episode. McHale remembered that Michele, 36, would always yell “Cheers,” both as herself and as Rachel. 

Ushkowitz’s own “cackle” became a part of her character Tina Cohen-Chang’s drunken behavior, along with McHale’s habit of trying on women’s clothes.

“We could just do what we wanted,” noted McHale, who played Artie Abrams. “It was very much just like what Kevin did. I definitely put on some of the girls’ clothing and just [went] for it.”

‘Glee’ cast in season 2.

Patrick Ecclesine/Fox Television/Everett 

Of filming the the party scene, McHale said: “It was so funny, and we were all losing our minds off camera the whole time… We did the party over and over and over again.”

Added Ushkowitz, “It felt like a party. It really did.”

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iHeartRadio drops new episodes of And That’s What You REALLY Missed weekly across multiple podcast platforms.

Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education