Ryan Murphy: Madonna gave me carte blanche

Glee creator Ryan Murphy gave an interview to the great Adam Shankman for Hollywood Reporter.

Madonna came in the discussion…

Shankman: What’s the ratio between the emotional episodes versus you wanting to do just something light?

Murphy: We run in a pattern where we’ll do one that’s just sort of a regular journeyman episode — comedy and also drama, 50/50 we call it — and then we’ll do one crazy spectacular bit, which is Britney Spears or Madonna. And right after that we’ll do one that rips your heart out.

Shankman: How did Madonna react to the episode?

Murphy: I was really nervous about her reaction. So I sent the script to her. The cool thing was that she never ever gave me any notes. She’s like, “I don’t want to read the script; whatever you want to do.” She gave me carte blanche. That, I thought, was strange because I had worked with her before and she’s very controlling. Then when I sent her the episode, she watched it with her daughter and said how much she loved it. We’re going to do another Madonna one. We’re doing a Britney one, and then we’re going to do a huge one after the Super Bowl.

Shankman: I laughed so hard when you pulled out that stilts number in the Madonna episode. I thought of (”Glee” choreographer) Zach Woodlee, who was one of my assistants for years. I keep texting him, “Haven’t you run out of stuff yet?”

Murphy: That stilt thing was his idea. That’s the best part about my job: I encourage people to go nuts. And I did love that Sue Sylvester would have cheerleaders on stilts. But he found those people.