'Glee' Stars Might Have Blown Their Shot at a Spin-Off Show

 
Singer Lea Michele attends the "Glee" Academy Screening and Q&A on May 4, 2011 in Hollywood, California. (Getty Images)more pics » Showrunner Ryan Murphy set tongues wagging when he said in an interview that the core 'Glee' cast would be graduating and leaving the show after the third season. (Getty Images) Despite many, many reports to the contrary, it turns out Cory Monteith, Lea Michele and Chris Colfer weren't going to be out of a job at the end of the next season of Glee. Earlier this month, show creator Ryan Murphy said they would no long be on the hit series after the third season, and after that the Glee rumors spread like wildfire.

It turns out Murphy was only telling half the truth. They wouldn't be on Glee anymore... because they had a spin-off in the works where Cory, Lea and Chris would all go to Julliard. But in a very snippy new interview with Deadline , Murphy has now revealed that the three actors might have blown their shot at their own show because of how they reacted to the Glee rumors in the media.

Among the things that bugged him? Chris saying that he found out he was fired via Twitter.

"We weren’t allowed to talk about a spin-off. ... The idea was to do it this fall when Glee gets back on the air," Murphy said. "Then, to pick up and read the actors saying, 'We found out we were fired from Twitter.' All of us, the studio, the network, were like, 'OK, that isn’t exactly cool,' because we involved all three of them in that decision.

"So then what happened is that we decided, 'OK, let’s not do it.' So that’s where we are today. Maybe we’ll talk about it in April or May, but for now let’s just concentrate on making Season 3 the best that we can do."

Wow, so how did this all blow up in everyone's faces?

"I think what happened is Chris Colfer did an interview and the timing probably was a little bit unfortunate," Murphy explained. "I think that he was getting a lot of calls with people saying, 'You’re fired. You’re fired.' And all of them knew they weren’t fired, but it was an awful thing to read. And I felt for them. And they couldn’t come out and say, 'No, we weren’t fired. We’re talking about a spin-off.' Because we told them not to. And this has blown up. So now we’re not doing the spin-off. It’s not my call."

Obviously Murphy is leaving the door open on this whole spin-off idea. He goes on to say that for the next three months, he's just focusing on the third season of Glee, but he won't definitively say whether a spin-off will or won't happen.

Murphy declines to shoulder any of the blame for the mishandling of the whole situation, which began with an interview where he was trying to generate Glee buzz by insinuating that his core cast was getting fired. Murphy insists he and co-showrunner Brad Falchuk were busy getting everyone on the same page creatively with this spin-off idea, but maybe they should have gotten everyone on the same page from a PR perspective before anyone started talking to the press.