Glee's Kevin McHale & Jenna Ushkowitz Open Up About Britney Spears & Working With Her During the Conservatorship
Glee stars Kevin McHale and Jenna Ushkowitz are opening up about what it was like to work with Britney Spears in the early days of her conservatorship.
If you forgot, the popular musical series welcomed the princess of pop on for a tribute episode back in 2010, just a few years after Britney was placed under the control of her father.
It wound up being a record-breaking episode for the series, and a second tribute took place years later without Britney‘s participation.
During a recent episode of their And That’s What You REALLY Missed podcast, Jenna and Kevin spilled on what they noticed about the hitmaker and her team while shooting scenes with her.
Read more about Britney Spears’ Glee experience…
Jenna described Britney as a personal idol, and both she and Kevin agreed that they were some of her biggest fans on the show. That made the whole experience very exciting for them, but it is now tinged with different feelings.
“We find out Britney is coming onto the show, and we can’t believe it. But it was also a little bit of ‘Is she going to come? Is she not going to come?’ We weren’t totally sure she was going to show up,” Kevin said, with Jenna agreeing that it was “rocky waters” for the star at the time.
When she was confirmed, they said that security was tighter than ever and that Britney‘s trailer was heavily fortified and right next to the set.
Regarding Britney, both noted that she seemed nervous about filming but was “very, very nice.”
“She was very quiet and very nice. Very nervous. You could see her hands with the paper, a little nervous. And a little… if you will in the nicest way possible… a little vacant. I mean that in the kindest way because at that point she must have been going through so much,” Jenna recalled, adding that it was “strange” and that now the situation “breaks [her] heart.”
Kevin agreed: “It was really hard to sort of witness what was happening because she had a huge team around her, and I remember when we decided to shoot the scene she was really trying. She really wanted to, like ‘Oh let me do it again.’ And Ryan [Murphy, director and showrunner] would be like ‘Great.’ She’d be like ‘Is it ok if I try this.’ [She] had ideas; it was great, and then she would get whisked away. Somebody from her team or something would take her away, and she’s come back and be again, for lack of a better word, a bit vacant.”
“When we would ask a question, it felt like you were talking around her and people were answering for her all the time,” Jenna added.
The cast all agreed that the hitmaker “wanted to be participating” in the episode, but Kevin noted “it felt like she was not given the chance to participate in the way that she wanted to.”
Despite all of the negatives, they saw an undeniable spark in the pop star. “It was amazing. The Britney Spears we know as a performer, all of a sudden that camera was rolling and she had one take under her belt, she was doing it. She was fully in it,” Kevin said.
Looking back, Jenna‘s feelings on the collaboration are conflicted. “It was this very weird contrast of being so excited, and also like now I just feel sad thinking about what she was going through at the time,” she explained.
Another of Britney‘s collaborators recently debunked a popular theory about her and also reflected on working with her during the conservatorship.
Press play on the podcast episode below to see what else the stars remembered…