You eyes were not deceiving you, it was wheelchair-bound Artie Abrams (Kevin McHale) boogeying around a shopping mall on both feet in last night's "Glee" episode.
In fact the former R & B boy-band star McHale is actually quite the mover when he's not sitting in the wheelchair as Artie on the show.
"I come from a dancing background and hip hop," McHale tells Popcorn Biz. "Which is funny because when the show started it was like, okay, you put the dancer in the wheel chair."
The decision to dance in last night's episode wasn't part of any master plan."In the beginning (of the series) it seemed we weren't going to go there, but it kind of fit," he says. "And I was happy."
And it wasn't a science miracle, but rather a fantasy sequence in Artie's head. The mall flashmob sequence was pretty cool, something McHale chalks up to "following what the show's amazing choreographers told me to do."
But the dancing scene will likely end McHale's streak of having fans of the show believe he actually is in a wheelchair and not just playing the part for television. McHale talks of walking into fans and having their jaws hit the ground in the early days and other stories of people understandably convinced that he is chair-bound.
"Earlier we were setting up the press tour and we had planning people asking if they needed to make preparations to make sure every place is wheelchair accessible and all that," McHale recalls. "The show producers were like, 'No, really Kevin's not really in a wheelchair.'"
On another note: he points out that the thick glasses are real and not thrown on for Glee club nerd effect. While he used to prefer contacts, he went with glasses for the part and never turned back. "For the original audition I decided to wear glasses and it just sort of stuck," McHale says. "Maybe that's why I got hired. Maybe they liked the glasses."
