Let’s get one thing straight: Kevin McHale, who plays wheelchair-bound underdog Artie Abrams on “Glee,” can really dance.
In this week’s episode, we learn that Artie’s been confined to a wheelchair since age eight, when he and his mother were in a car accident. She’s fine today, but he’s paralyzed. Still, Artie matter-of-factly informs his crush, Tina (Jenna Ushkowitz), “Let me make one thing clear: there’s nothing wrong with my penis.”
“At first glance, Artie’s probably the biggest geek out of all of them,” says McHale, 21, a native of Plano, TX. “He thinks he’s cool, he thinks he can do Jay Z, Kanye. He’s a bit naive, but he totally doesn’t care what anyone else thinks about what he does.”
“I don’t know another actor who could have turned this role into what it is,” says Zach Woodlee, the show’s choreographer and producer. “Artie is now someone you know is supposed to be in the club. If it wasn’t someone who was as strong a presence, you wouldn’t relate to him as much.”
In the “Wheels” episode, the glee club must raise money so that Artie can ride to compete with the team. They also spend time in wheelchairs because their coach (Matthew Morrison), wants them to experience life as Artie does.
Artie could be a hard role for McHale, a former member of the boy band NLT (Not Like Them) who can segue effortlessly from singing Usher’s “Confessions” to Ike and Tina Turner’s “Proud Mary.” But he’s also one of the cast’s more talented dancers.
“I have a dancing background and I learn all the routines that everyone else does. During rehearsals, I’m in the corner dancing along, or if someone’s not there, I’ll stand in for him or her,” he says.
During the shooting of the “Glee” pilot, for example, McHale’s co-star Cory Monteith was in Canada waiting to obtain a visa, so McHale stood in for the rehearsals of Journey’s classic “Don’t Stop Believin.’”
In the “Wheels” episode, McHale shines on Billy Idol’s “Dancing with Myself,” doing lots of tricks in his wheelchair. Later, the cast performs “Proud Mary” in wheelchairs.
In fact, performing in wheelchairs is much more challenging than audiences might expect — starting with teaching the actors how to get around in wheelchairs to coming up with the choreography and building the correct staging.
“It was the scariest number we had done,” says Woodlee. “You don’t know what those chairs can do, and you don’t know what those kids can do in the chairs. So a lot of it was just cross your fingers and pray.”
Prayers were called for while the cast learned the routine. At first, the stage’s ramps were too steep and the actors couldn’t get up them in their chairs. Even after the stages were rebuilt, it took the actors a while to learn how to move. Many found that if they didn’t shift their weight correctly, they quickly flipped backwards.
“It was like roller derby,” says Woodlee. “All of the actors would fall backwards and hit their heads — particularly Lea Michele, who plays Rachel. You lose your balance really quick when you try to go up a ramp in a wheelchair. Amber Riley, who plays Mercedes, caught an edge going down a ramp and fell off completely.
“There were pile-ups; there were crashes. Basically, everything that could go wrong, did.”