ONTD

“Everything starts to have Glee potential when you hear it. It sort of transforms your relationship with music,” says Jessalyn Gilsig when she tries to come up with what song she’d like to make her singing debut on the hit series, which returns Tuesday at 8 p.m. on Global and Fox.

The Montreal-born actress — who plays Terri Schuester, a.k.a. Mrs. Shue, a.k.a. the pregnancy-faking shrew who cuckolded Matthew Morrison’s Glee club leader last year — doesn’t know when she’ll get the chance to show off her own pipes, but series mastermind Ryan Murphy promises her it’s coming.

A huge hit out of the gates last year, the series has spawned hit soundtrack albums and a live tour, and it has artists lining up to have their songs get the Glee club treatment.

It’s easy to forget that the show is just starting its second season. Britney Spears will guest star later this year, and will get the full episode treatment, and there will be a Rocky Horror Picture Show special, featuring much of the original cast. The hottest web rumour is that Gwyneth Paltrow is in talks to make an appearance.

As for Gilsig, she returns next week, in the season’s second episode, acting an intense scene with Will (Morrison) that anyone who has been involved in a messy breakup will understand.

“Everybody thought that (Terri) was coming back much more gentle, and then I shot that second episode. Ryan (Murphy) was directing, and he said ‘tear this throat out.’ So I did. It was pretty nasty,” she says. “It’s a great scene. We’re like that ugly, sad, broken couple that has no shame in public, and he goes after me, too, and we do it right in front of Emma (Jayma Mays). It’s sad. That’s just what you do sometimes when you are in that much pain.”

Gilsig says she had no qualms playing such a polarizing character, who was saddled with a no-win fake pregnancy storyline in the first season. She says she wasn’t worried because she is one of the few actors who had worked with Murphy previously on Nip/Tuck.

“I know she started with such a deficit, but he was really communicating with me, saying ‘hang in there, it’s a marathon, everything doesn’t get resolved in one episode on a show like this.’ So when we had that episode when Will discovered the fake pregnancy, that’s when we had the chance to really show the core of this relationship, how it had fallen apart, and how it had decayed,” she says. “I mean everything that she did was motivated by love. It was completely misguided and absolutely the wrong thing to do. It’s indefensible, but she was terrified that she was losing him. She didn’t know what to do, so she took these desperate measures. I’m not apologizing for her, but I do understand her.”

She praises Murphy for writing complex female characters, and despite playing one of the villains last year, she warns: “The thing about Ryan is that just when he sets the rules, and you think you know what Glee is going to be, he’s going to break them.”

Tuesday night’s episode is a table setter, with the Glee club members returning to school, hoping to find themselves a few rungs higher on the social ladder, but finding that not to be the case. As well, there are new characters, including football coach Bieste (Dot Jones), a new foil for Sue Sylvester, and Sunshine, (Charice Pempengco), a pint-sized potential rival for Rachel (Lea Michele).

“We’ve been joking about hazing the new cast members a bit. I mean you can’t just come into Glee’s second season and it just be smooth sailing,” she jokes. “But that’s one of the great things about the show, just how balanced it is, how the focus can really go to any character, and the feeling that the show can go in any direction.”

• For the record, “Love the Way You Lie” by Eminem and Rihanna, or “Don’t Cha” by the Pussycat Dolls — “preferably right in Will’s face with Emma watching,” says Gilsig with a wicked smirk — are two of the tunes she’d love to sing when her debut comes.

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Terri should sing Alanis Morissette's "You Oughta Know." It'd be perfect for her.