Trivia Tuesday: Jenna Ushkowitz

Can you believe I almost forgot TT?  Here it is, for all you Tina fans!  If you have anything to add, please leave it in the comments!

Jenna appeared as Little Red Riding Hood in both her high school and college productions of Into the Woods.

Jenna has done work doing voice over for children toys such as Fisher Price "I Can Play Piano."

She is inspired by Kate Winslet, Sandra Oh, Sean Penn, Leonardo DiCaprio and Johnny Depp.

Her ipod is filled with everything -- Adele, Katy Perry, Kelly Clarkson, Kings of Leon, Coldplay, Jason Mraz, Billy Joel… etc.

As a child, Jenna appeared in commercials for JELL-O, Burger King and Hess Truck.

At age 13 Jenna performed the National Anthem at the Madison Square Garden for a Knicks game.

Jenna graduated from the Holy Trinity Diocesan High School in 2004.

Jenna appeared in the Tony Award winning play Spring Awakening, with Lea Michele, in New York.  Her first Broadway appearance was in The King and I in 1996.


Jenna graduated from Marymount Manhattan College where she majored in Acting and minored in Musical Theater.

She's a Yankees fan!

(On her early work) I did three Jell-O commercials with Bill Cosby. I was kind of one of those kids who would go up to people in restaurants and say hi to all the tables - that kind of thing. So it kind of rooted from that and they were, like, why don’t you get her into modeling? She’s a cute little Asian girl! So they put me in and we found a manager on Long Island. The first job that I booked was Fisher-Price for the Dress Me Up Ernie doll and the second one was a Toys ‘R’ Us commercial with Geoffrey the giraffe.


(On Broadway) I have to say, as a theatre trained actor, there is nothing like Broadway/live theatre. I love the instant response and energy from the audience. TV is a completely different world and I'm pretty new to it, so I'm enjoying learning new things everyday- but Glee is the ultimate dream, because we get to do both!

(On her character's stutter in Glee) Originally she had a much more dramatic stutter -- Tourette's almost. And so I did my research because I didn't want to ever make it like I was making fun of the stutter. I played her really positive and Ryan laughed and he said he really liked that, that she's like a happy geek. She wasn't a gothic at the time.