by Gina Scarpa

This Sunday, Oxygen will unveil its new reality show, The Glee Project, which gives 12 young hopefuls the chance to win a multi-episode guest starring role on the hit FOX show, Glee. Serving as one of the mentors to the contestants is Zach Woodlee, who is the choreographer for Glee and has worked on several other television shows and movies. Today, we spoke to Zach in an exclusive interview to get more details and insight into The Glee Project.

Q. Gina, RealityWanted: Tell us a little about your background in choreography. When did things start to get big for you?
A. Zach: I have three brothers and I grew up in a dance studio dancing. I ended up moving to L.A. I was in a scholarship program and started dancing professionally. You start to realize that there's an expiration period on certain performance aspects. At 27, I was like, "I gotta start moving on." Adam Shankman and Anne Fletcher were a lot of my employment through my dance career. Adam's incredible. Anne directed The Proposal and 27 Dresses and she has a wonderful sense of comedic timing. I thought I'd give it a whirl. I had toured with Madonna and I was in Portugal for a month and I was like, "I think I'm done dancing." I moved into this tv/film world and decided I wanted to work with actors and backup dancers. Ryan Murphy had this pilot and I went and met with him and fell in love with Glee.

Q. Gina, RealityWanted: What made you want to get involved in The Glee Project?
A. Zach: It's interesting. It was sort of brought to me during our season 2 with, "This is sort of where we're going and another branch we're going to experiment with." I had seen some of the audition tapes and it's truly incredible - some of the talent that's out there that would never, ever have the opportunity to be on a show like this. Not all of them can move to L.A. and get an agent and audition every other week. These are extremely talented kids that have the heart, which is so much of what our scripted show was about. This could be really, really special - finding the true voice of Glee. Not just a singing voice, but sort of a true, mirror into the real lives of kids in America. We have kids on The Glee Project that have just gotten out of high school, did community performances, and never went on a real audition. There's a lot of "firsts" that are on the show.

Q. Gina, RealityWanted: How tough was it to narrow the contestants down to the final 12 that we will see compete on the show?
A. Zach: Oh my gosh! It was painstaking. I think that was my first realization that this was not going to be easy. There are not identical contestants offering up the same thing. It's not like, "This week, we're making turkey sandwiches and your turkey sandwich is the best so you win." Certain people excel one week and fall the next. It's really a roller coaster. We're trying to find the best contender who can come into season 3, ready to go. It's a crash course in: "This is how we do it. These are your tools. Go." To get down to the 12 was extremely difficult. It tears at your heartstrings. It becomes really emotional.

Q. Gina, RealityWanted: As a mentor, what is your approach and advice to the contestants?
A. Zach: Embrace your flaws. In general, people are embarrassed to dance in front of one another unless you're drunk at a wedding. Dancing can be very social but it can also be very scary. For me, it was really about, "Let's get comfortable. Everyone already loves you. You made it this far. Take what you got and run."

The Glee Project premieres Sunday, June 12th, at 9/8c on Oxygen.

(Image courtesy of Oxygen)

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