If Nip/Tuck once orbited the zeitgeist, Murphy's next series, the Fox musical dramedy Glee, would become a full-blown cultural phenomenon. The series about a high school glee club of underdog outcasts launched in 2009, and by season two, it was the second-highest-rated scripted series on television, behind only Modern Family. At its peak, the series was drawing 13.5 million viewers. There were chart-topping albums, too, along with sold-out tours and a guest-star roster that read like a Hollywood phone book. But the billion-dollar franchise eventually would fall back down to earth, with troubles on camera and off. "I look at the Empire cast and everything that's going on with them, and I'm just like, 'Don't do it. Keep it together.' And I think they have in the way that we never did," says Murphy, who adds, "To this day, I'm devastated by everything that happened with that show."
Over the course of six seasons of Glee, which petered out earlier this year, there was plenty written about backstage drama, fractured relationships and the death of star Cory Monteith from a drug overdose. All Murphy will offer are his own misgivings about his role on the show. "I was there with them all day long, and then we'd finish work and we'd go out and have fun all night, and I guess in a weird, twisted way, I was trying to relive the childhood I never had," he says. "I thought they wanted a parent, and they didn't. They didn't want me to tell them what to f—ing do. They didn't want me to tell them how to treat each other or what the world was like at the end of the day. I wish I could go back and do that differently with a lot of those actors. Some of them I'm still very close to: Lea Michele, Chord Overstreet, Darren Criss — but there were some that didn't work out well, and I regret that. I guess I just wish I had been able to let them figure it out for themselves."