QQ. A lot of people have been asking, does Brittany have a last name?
A. That's probably the best question I've ever been asked because she doesn't. I've always asked Ryan, "Does Brittany have a last name?" He's like, "No, I think you're just Brittany." Our nickname for her on the show is Brittawny; she's the only one who doesn't have a last name!
Q. "Glee" has some of the best comedic moments and lines, as does your character Brittany. She may not say much now, but what she does say is hilarious.
A. A lot of the stuff they give me will be last minute, it won't be in the script, and they'll just kind of throw it at me on set. They'll run a scene and then Ryan will be like, "Ok Heather, I want you to say this." It's always fun because it's so out of nowhere, I don't even know what he's going to give me to say. There actually have been a couple of times where I'll jokingly say something in a scene and he'll be like, "Oh that's in, that's in," and he'll use stuff that I say. It's always fun because it's so simple, no-brainer random stuff.
Q. So you have moments of adlibbing with your lines?
A. One time specifically in one of the new episodes that will be airing on Tuesday there was a line in a choir scene. In the middle of the scene I was joking and Jonathan Groff who plays Jesse St. James was standing next to Mr. Schuester, played by Matthew Morrison, and they looked identical. At the end of the joke I said, "Mr. Schue, is he your son?" Ryan started cracking up and he was like, "I'm using it!"
Q. Just from Brittany alone, you have some of the most incredible lines.
A. I literally thank the writers and Ryan every day because I get so many compliments on them. It's not that I write them so I can be like, "Thank you so much." I always go back to them and say that everybody loves the stuff they write for me. I think they have a lot of fun doing it too, that's why they do it, because they think it's just so funny to have my character say the things that I say that nobody else would. They decided that this girl is going to be literally insane and she's going to say anything she wants to.
Q. Is comedic timing something that comes naturally to you or have you studied it?
A. I don't know, I never focus on it. When you get stuff like that, you know when the moment is funny. You don't know how to force it to be funny, it just is. I don't want to say I'm naturally good at comedy but I always loved to make people laugh my whole life, it was something my dad was really good at too.
Q. Ryan has said that people will come to learn that Brittany is certifiably insane, can you elaborate on that?
A. It's not even like I get dumber, he's right, I literally get insane. Sometimes the things that I say don't even make sense. I am sure all of the other characters are like, "This girl, we need to get her out of the Glee club because she's nuts!"
Q. It's kind of like Brittany is everyone's pet! Sometimes she's Santana's pet, other times she has sympathy for Rachel or Quinn and she's their pet.
A. That's actually really true, I'm going to tell Ryan that! I'm literally like Glee Club's little puppy that just runs around and does things and entertains people. At the end of the day I pretty much love everybody, no matter who they are, so I'll just smile at people or be nice because I am really not a mean girl. I just follow what everybody else does because I don't know what I am doing.
Q. There was a rumor going around that there would be a relationship between Santana and Brittany, any truth to that?
A. I always get asked that question! Naya and I had read that online, Ryan was saying something a couple of weeks ago at PaleyFest. Someone had asked will Santana and Brittany actually fulfill this love affair that they have been hinting at and Ryan said something about it and they quoted him online. Naya and I were wondering if this was actually going to happen, can they do this on national television? We asked him and he was like, "I think it was just a dirty guy and I just said it to get a kick out of him." He was like, "Our show is not like that, we're not trying to push relationships like that just to make fans happy, it has to be organic and natural."
Q. So maybe the people who like the Santana/Brittany relationship will have to wait for another season.
A. Naya and I are always together every second of the day while we're shooting. So a lot of it are just moments on the show you'll see that is just Naya and I joking around with each other and being really close. It's always her and I just messing around and they end up using it.
Q. The show continues to garner such incredible international success, especially with so many flash mobs, how do you feel about the reach that the show is getting?
A. I had no idea that the flash mobs had gotten that big. My friend's doing a television show about a flash mob but I didn't know that it had caught on from the show. Because I am not involved in Twitter and I don't have any connections with fans, I don't know so many things like how big the show has gotten. So when we did "Oprah" over the weekend it was so surreal with the fans there and how loud it was. Traveling back and forth at the airport, so many people were in aw of Lea Michele and Cory Monteith and there were paparazzi at the airport. I had never experienced that before and it was such a weird whirlwind. They took pictures of me and i was like, "I'm not famous, don't take pictures of me!"
Q. You all have paparazzi after you and you're on magazine covers, is it getting to be pandemonium for the cast?
A. Kind of! Ryan always asks if we've seen this thing about somebody writing about you or something else. We try and stay away from it all so we try and keep true to the craft and what the show really is about. The moment you start to let that stuff get to you, it takes away from the magic you're actually making. We all just stay focused with each other and only work on what we need to work on and then on the side if we have time we'll hear about things or we'll look things up.
Q. What's nice about the show is that they give everyone a chance to feel like they are a part of it, just like the Myspace auditioning campaign.
A. They were supposed to do that television show search and then they took it away because Ryan was like, "I felt like it wasn't what we wanted." It was the same thing that they did before, it was exactly the same thing, people sent in tapes. He just wanted to keep it consistent and real, keep it what it was from the start.
Q. The other big question people wanted to know is if Brittany will get a solo or more of a focus coming up?
A. I do show my face a lot more. Like you had mentioned, I am always friends with people so I do get to make a lot more friendships, which I love and is awesome. I don't get to sing yet, maybe with season two, we'll see what happens with that. I'm just happy because, for me, I wasn't even supposed to have much of a role. Now I get to do so much more and now I have a couple of storylines.
Q. What do you think it is about the show that continues to just garner so much success?
A. When we started the show, I wasn't a part of the pilot, but the whole thing took off and we started making this magic for the thirteen episodes. We didn't know, we didn't have a scale to measure by, we were just doing it and performing. We got to see the episodes as they went along and kind of gauge how we were doing and what we needed to work on. Now I feel like because we still have the same people, nothing is going to change. We're given this really good material and we're also given this really good feedback from it. It just feeds the energy and the fire more for us to keep making the exact same magic and maybe even a little bit more. I feel like a lot of us are performers in the sense that if we're given something and we're given positive feedback we're just going to make it even better to make the audience love it more. It's like a performance, if you get energy you're going to give it back, it's this constant ping pong game of energy.
Q. The cast continues to make such a great impression on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. Why do you think it's so important for them to connect with fans that way?
A. I think a lot of the kids while we're on set want people to relate to them. For us, knowing actors and actresses that are on Twitter that are doing the same thing, you feel like you can relate to them in a different way than just watching them on TV as their character. A lot of them want people to know what kind of person they are and that they can talk to them and that they are normal people. It's all tangible, it all has to be tangible for everyone involved, especially the fans because they want to be included, so why not include them.
Q. What would you like to say to your fans and supporters?
A. You guys effect me a lot more than you think you do because I go home at night and I talk to my roommate and she'll tell me she's so proud of me. Even hearing that from her, somebody who is as close as she is, it literally doesn't hit me. It breaks my heart sometimes that I don't see it or hear it everyday, I wish that I could talk to everybody. Not that I want feed my own head or make myself more excited about it, I really appreciate everything that everyone says because I listen to everything. Even the haters, even the people with bad things to say, it all helps so don't stop.
