‘Glee’ Co-Creator Ryan Murphy on the Show’s Music, His Favorite Scene, and Guest Star Gwyneth Paltrow

“Glee” co-creator and executive producer Ryan Murphy has numerous obsessions. He’s obsessed with Diane Keaton, and recently bought a house from her. He’s obsessed with Linda Evangelista, though he never wants to actually meet her. And he’s obsessed with Meryl Streep, for whom he once created a fan club (forcing members to watch “Sophie’s Choice” four weekends in row) and with whom he now shares an agent.

All three obsessions came up in a panel discussion with Murphy last night in Beverly Hills as part of the Paley Center’s Innovators Series. Though the question and answer session spanned much of Murphy’s life and career, most of the inquiries eventually returned to “Glee” — especially since the 44-year-old writer/producer/director was participating in the panel during a break from shooting an upcoming episode of the Fox series. The episode features guest star Gwyneth Paltrow as a terrible substitute teacher (expect her to belt out a tune from “Chicago” and scream at a teapot while dressed as Mary Todd Lincoln.)

Interviewer Maria Elena Fernandez of the Los Angeles Times began the session by asking Murphy to tell her what he didn’t like about himself — the question the fictional doctors from Murphy’s FX series “Nip/Tuck” would ask of all of their potential patients. Murphy responded by explaining that he always felt incredibly restless, and that he wished he was able to pause and stay with something. From there, the conversation touched upon his growing up gay in a conservative, Catholic household and his early career as a celebrity journalist (dealing with newspaper deadlines trained him to never have writers’ block when writing TV scripts).

A pop-culture fiend, Murphy said that he would steal Rex Reed profiles from his hometown library and still reads three newspapers a day — the print version, because he likes tactile feel of the paper. Being culturally informed, he said, directly fed into his work, whether it was a germ of a story about calf implants that led to the creation of “Nip/Tuck,” or an obscure history factoid that led to Paltrow being dressed as the aforementioned First Lady back on the “Glee” soundstage.

As for “Glee,” Murphy said he intended to do a lighter series after he got tired of bringing home all the dark themes of his previous TV series home with him. The acclaim for the show has certainly relaxed him a bit, even as he continues to be surprised by certain aspects of its success, such as the music — he didn’t even realize the show needed a soundtrack album until the idea was suggested to him. Murphy also said he tries to stay away from reading reviews of the show on Twitter (”it’s like heroin, it’s like crack”), though he’s not above using the show’s social media-happy stars to help market his other projects. As an example, he noted that early tracking for “Eat Pray Love” showed that his film with Julia Roberts wasn’t reaching the younger female demo, so he had the “Glee” cast see the movie and tweet about it.

Murphy also addressed some of the criticism from families about the make-out scene between cheerleaders Santana and Brittany during Tuesday night’s “Duets” episode (if the show didn’t have any edge or emotional investment, it would just be “Saved By the Bell”). The show’s heart, he added, could be summed in a scene between Sue Sylvester (who’s getting her own published autobiography for season three!) and Emma in the episode “Grilled Cheesus.” The crucial scene involves Sue talking about how she used to pray for God to help cure her sister with Down Syndrome, but since he never responded, she stopped believing. Murphy said that he didn’t care if audiences agreed or disagreed with the sentiment, but he did want to start a conversation and invite people to not be afraid of discussing serious issues in the open.

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