In a recent interview with Nerds and Beyond, Stephen Kramer Glickman, who played eccentric record producer Gustavo Rocque on Nickelodeon's hit musical comedy series Big Time Rush opened up on whether he would be down for a Big Time Rush reboot! The actor also talked about fans and revealed that there was a bit of behind-the-scenes beef during seasons 3 and 4 of BTR. He also revealed that he had COVID-19.
Check out a few excerpts from the interview below, and read the whole discussion on nerdsandbeyond.com!
Nerds and Beyond: [Most] fans know you as Gustavo from Big Time Rush, as do I. You’re seen on social media quite a lot signing autographs, even writing out some of the songs for fans. Would you ever consider doing a reboot if given the chance and you’re asked by Nickelodeon or Paramount?
Stephen: Absolutely, I would in a heartbeat. It’s one of those really crazy things that I keep having these moments with Big Time Rush, where it’s really hard to put something behind you when it’s a part of your life. It’s really difficult to just let it go forever when you wake up every day to messages, no matter where you are. It’s ingrained into the culture of my life. Really weird things happen, like kids sending me money out of nowhere. Not like, “Hey, do you mind if I send you money? I have something I want you to do,” but found my Venmo and then send me money so that I would handwrite lyrics to Big Time Rush songs. That’s not even something I offer, they just made it up and I did it for them. Why not? It’s weird but I love it. It’s pretty cool.
Nerds and Beyond: I mean, you’re part of so many childhoods.
Stephen: Exactly, yeah. It’s like when you’re a part of so many people’s childhoods, it’s fun, and we did a really good job on our show, and everyone is cool. There’s no one in our cast getting DUIs or doing horrible, horrible things and getting in trouble. Everyone’s really nice and really cool and that’s a great thing. It’s made it so that fans who grew up on it don’t have to suddenly have that embarrassment after feeling bad.
It was a solid show; it was funny and weird. Especially in season 1 and season 2, we are having so much fun and it’s so stupid. Season 3 starts to get a little hard, season 4 is definitely the hardest because things were getting weird. It was getting weird. There were tensions and fights and issues with music and issues with touring, lines getting cut or things getting changed or whatever those are. It’s always weird on TV, but I was happy the whole time. I was never not happy. I was so proud and feel very blessed to have been part of it.
Nerds and Beyond: Earlier this year, you released a cover of “How to Save a Life” with your Big Time Rush co-star Kendall Schmidt. What was the planning like for it? Had you two been talking about it for a long time or was it just a spur of the moment type deal?
Stephen: I wanted to do an album, and I was already recording songs for The Moving Company. But “How to Save a Life,” I really wanted to cover it but I just hate it when people cover songs and play the same instruments the song was originally recorded with. It just seems boring. I really wanted a guitar, so I called Kendall and I was like, “Dude, would you play guitar on ‘How to Save a Life?'” And he’s like, “Dude, I’ll do you one better. I’ll produce it, I’ll do the harmonies, I’ll do the whole thing.” He didn’t need to. He did everything for it and it was so cool.
I love Kendall. He’s like the sweetest guy in the world and I think he kind of knew I wanted to put out an album, and I wanted to do this kind of stuff. So him doing that for me — him doing that song for me, working with me on it — it actually set me up really nicely instead of starting from scratch when it came to putting my album on Spotify. Now I’ve got 15,000 subscribers, 20,000 listeners all the time, and “How to Save a Life” did over 100,000 streams on Spotify. It immediately links everybody to the album, so when people are listening to that it goes, “Do you want to hear more?” There’s more songs now and that’s awesome. He’s always been a great guy, but he definitely set me up to win on that one, which is really cool. It was awesome and also is a fun role reversal, me pretending to be his producer for so long and then him actually being my producer.
Nerds and Beyond: [You] made your cover album, The Moving Company, during this whole pandemic, even working alongside your sister, Natalie. What was that whole process like and how did the album even come to mind?
Stephen: Well, I went through a breakup. And then I got COVID. Then, I was trapped at home with just my thoughts and my fat dog. I just was sitting around trying to figure out something to do. I couldn’t do stand-up, there was no acting, you couldn’t go out and do anything. I mean, we were quarantined, you couldn’t leave the house, and I started making live streams where I would just take song requests. I started taking requests on TikTok and started getting like 30,000, 40,000, 50,000 per live stream, which was really crazy, and I started getting a lot of crazy song requests for stuff. I mean, of course, I was getting Big Time Rush, that’s a given.
I was doing that and a producer was watching. This big Grammy-winning producer that produced for U2 was watching and reached out and was like, “Hey, you should put down a couple tracks, do a little something.” I told my sister, who’s a singer-songwriter and a music producer, she has a label, she’s a big deal in the music world, and so I told her I was gonna do it. She was super supportive and recorded a couple songs, and then that turned into a ridiculous amount of songs that I was recording and I just had no idea how to put together an album.
I just kept going back in and being like, “Hey, let’s just do another one. Let’s just do another like six songs, 10 songs today.” I was just having so much fun. And so I was able to get her to come on to produce it to kind of corral me into making a 10-song album that all makes sense where it all flows from start to finish, it doesn’t feel super disjointed. So that’s kind of a tenant of how it all went down. I got really lucky. Having someone else that’s in the business in your family is unbelievably helpful, because how [helpful is] having a little sister that you can turn to and be like, “Is this good, or is it just me singing Coldplay?”
You can stream The Moving Company on Spotify and Apple Music now. Check out The Night Time Show whereever you can listen to podcasts. Monster Hunter: Legends of the Guild is on Netflix, while Tales of a Fifth Grade Robin Hood premieres on Tubi on August 27!
In case you missed it, Big Time Rush are reuniting for Big Time Rush Live 2021, which will see the boys play at Chicago Theater in Chicago, IL on December 15 and the Manhattan Center Hammerstein Ballroom in New York, NY on December 18. Tickets are on sale via Ticketmaster now. For more information, see https://www.bigtimerushofficial.com. Official tour merch is also now available at https://bigtimerush.store.
Big Time Rush is available to stream on Paramount+ and Netflix.
More Nick: Big Time Rush Announces Reunion Tour!
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