The Glee Project is an American reality television series from Oxygen, which served as an audition for Glee. The prize for the winner was a minimum seven-episode arc in the following season of the show. Glee executive producers Ryan Murphy and Dante Di Loreto executive produced for The Glee Project. Glee’s casting director, Robert Ulrich, was casting director for the project, while Glee’s on-screen non-speaking accompanist, Brad Ellis, helping Ulrich coach 80 potential candidates as seen in the music segment of “The Top 12” special that led into the pilot episode of season 1.
Winners
Damian McGinty and Samuel Larsen were both proclaimed the winners of the first season, each winning a seven-episode arc. Runners-up Lindsay Pearce and Alex Newell were given prizes of a two-episode arc on Glee, and Cameron Mitchell, who quit the competition in episode 7, won the “fan favorite” competition and the associated $10,000 prize. Pearce’s two-episode arc, as a Rachel Berry-esque girl named Harmony, consisted of the season premiere episode “The Purple Piano Project” and the eighth episode “Hold On to Sixteen”, while McGinty began his arc as Rory Flanagan, an Irish exchange student, in the fourth episode “Pot o’ Gold”; McGinty was retained on the show beyond his seven-episode prize. Larsen debuted on Glee in the thirteenth episode, “Heart”, as a transfer student named Joe Hart, also appearing beyond his original seven-episode stint. Newell’s first appearance was in the April 17, 2012 episode “Saturday Night Glee-ver”. He played Wade Adams, a transgender member of the rival Vocal Adrenaline show choir, and appeared briefly in “Props”, returning a few more times before transferring to McKinley High for the series’ fourth season and becoming a series regular for its fifth season. McGinty, Larsen, Pearce and Newell were chosen to sing on the 2011 Glee Christmas album, Glee: The Music, The Christmas Album Volume 2.
The second season premiered in the US on June 5, 2012, and ran for eleven weeks, concluding on August 14, 2012. There was one winner for the season: Blake Jenner won the seven-episode arc on Glee. He made his first appearance in the fifth episode of season four, “The Role You Were Born to Play”, as a McKinley student named Ryder Lynn. He was a recurring character for 18 episodes on season 4 and was promoted to series regular on season 5. Ali Stroker, the runner up, also made an unexpected first appearance in the fourth season episode, “I Do”, as Betty Pillsbury.
Dianna’s appearances
Dianna was a guest on the show as a judge/mentor in two episodes in the second season – 2×10 “Actability” (original air date 7 August 2012) and 2×11 “Glee-Ality” (original air date August 14 2012).
Other Projects > Reality-TV > The Glee Project (2012) > 2×11: Glee-Ality 2 (14 August 2012)