Steve Dietl/FOXJamie Lee Curtis for president of everything. Please and thank you.
The iconic horror/comedy actress slayed a room full or reporters today at a Scream Queens panel, throwing out gems on humanity, feminism, the state of the world today and perhaps the greatest revelation: She pokes herself with a pushpin while shooting. Not kidding here, people. All because the show is Too. Damn. Funny. (You'll get it when you see it!)
"I've been in a lot of comedies and the writing on this show is so strong and so funny," Curtis explained. "Niecy Nash who yes, she says what they write, but she also says a lot more. And here is my secret. Kevin Klein to this day doesn't speak to me because I ruined so many takes laughing at A Fish Called Wanda. So I put a pushpin or a toothpick between my fingers and I push really hard. Seriously, when you watch the show, look at my hand. My hand is below the frame. Whatever Niecy Nash is throwing at me, I'm squeezing a pushpin between my fingers. That's a testament to the writing and it's very, very funny."
We now have a new rule for the Scream Queens drinking game we're clearly going to be doing: See who can NOT laugh the longest! Pushpins invited. And trust, even with that, it is not easy.
Scream Queens, which hails from Ryan Murphy and his Glee co-creators Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan, is a horror-comedy series which also serves as a piercing satirical look at the greek system. Brennan said he's having an even better time writing Scream Queens than he did Glee.
"I felt even more unleashed with this show than I did with Glee," said Brennan, who wrote many of Sue Sylvester's best lines on Glee. "It allows for more. It was great to get into this room with these two [Brad and Ryan]. It was back to just us. It was like putting on an old shoe."
Murphy and Falchuk also work on American Horror Story, which really goes there when it comes to gore and sex, obviously, and Murphy described how it's been dealing with network Standards and Practices on a horror show.
"Scream Queens has much more satirical cartoonish quality," he explained. "Horror Story is much more sexualized and darker at times. We have had really healthy discussions at times with Broadcast...Shockingly, more about the language and the sexuality. That's what's interesting. Violence is cool for the most part. It's language, it's slang it's trying to really reflect how people talk, characters who are open about their sexuality and talk about their sexuality, who get the most push back."
The cast--including Curtis, Nash, Emma Roberts, Lea Michele, Keke Palmer, Skyler Samuels, Abigail Breslin, Diego Boneta and Nasim Pedrad--all talked about how the cast has really bonded, and has become something of a sorority behind the scenes, throwing out their own theories on the killer, etc. And though the full cast wasn't signed on for more than a year when they were cast, Murphy says many if not all of them are asking to stay on. "They send muffin baskets," he joked.
"Why do you think we're all here and looking good?" Curtis quipped about not wanting to be killed off.
Murphy revealed after the panel that as of now, there will be "four or five" survivors at the end of this season, and they won't be sticking around that murder-filled sorority house for very long.
"Every year, we're going to sort of keep five characters, and put the characters in a whole new setting," Murphy revealed. "So this year will be goodbye to the sorority world, and they will go off as a group and go off to another venue."
Murphy said he was absolutely inspired by Curtis' past as the ultimate scream queen.
"Something that Jamie Lee and I talked about when I first met her was this philosophy of the last girl," he said. "There's always one girl standing, and she's a perfect example of that. So we're paying tribute to that in our show."
However, the chances of figuring out who those five people will be before we're supposed to are very slim, as Murphy promised that extra attention will be paid to preventing spoilers.
"When we get into the last couple scripts, we have the red herring death scenes we're going to film, so we'll have many many versions of that ending," Murphy told us. "So that really only three people in the world will know until we get it on the air."
Oh, to be one of those three.
As for Roberts, who plays perhaps the worst human being ever to have graced a sorority house, no wait, maybe Earth, said she sometimes has to aplogize to her co-stars after fiming.
"You read it sometimes and think, 'Oh my God this is crazy!'" she said. "You kind of just have to do it and accept it. It's this imagined world. There are definitely times when I'd apologize to the girls when cut was called. But it's been fun more than anything. The way these guys write for us the insults, you cant help but laugh."
Even if you have a pushpin.
Scream Queens premieres Sept. 22. Stand by for more scoop from the cast! And send any questions you have via Twitter to @kristindsantos.