page_title: List of Glee characters
section_title: Emma Pillsbury
hierarchical_section_title: List of Glee characters / Main characters / Emma Pillsbury
caption_attribution_description: English: Actress Jayma Mays at premiere party of TV series Glee, Santa Monica, California.
context_page_description: Glee is a musical comedy-drama television series that aired on Fox in the United States for six seasons from 2009 to 2015. It focuses on the high school glee club New Directions competing in the show choir competition circuit, while its members deal with relationships, sexuality and social issues.
  The initial main cast encompassed club director and Spanish teacher Will Schuester, cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester, guidance counselor Emma Pillsbury, Will's wife Terri, and eight club members played by Dianna Agron, Chris Colfer, Kevin McHale, Lea Michele, Cory Monteith, Amber Riley, Mark Salling and Jenna Ushkowitz. For the second season, formerly recurring cast members Mike O'Malley, Heather Morris and Naya Rivera were promoted to the main cast. In the third season the main cast remained at fifteen, with Harry Shum, Jr. and Darren Criss promoted to it, while Gilsig and O'Malley no longer received star billing. The fourth season began with fourteen in the main cast, with Chord Overstreet being promoted, and Mays and Agron were removed and demoted to recurring cast.
context_section_description: Emma Pillsbury (Jayma Mays) is the school's guidance counselor who has OCD, with obsessions and compulsions primarily focused on contamination and cleanliness. She has romantic feelings for Will. Mays has deemed Emma an "amazing" character to play, explaining: "I don't find that female characters are always written with a lot of depth, but she's so well defined on the page. Sure, she's terrified of germs and in love with a married man, so seeing her as the voice of reason for the kids is amazing." Glee's costume designer Lou Eyrich selects "quirky" outfits for Emma, to reflect her "sunny disposition". In an attempt to get over Will, Emma begins dating football coach Ken Tanaka, becoming engaged to him in the episode "Vitamin D". However, when Will is unable to attend a competition with the glee club, Emma volunteers to take them in his place, postponing her own wedding by several hours. Acknowledging her continuing feelings for Will, Ken breaks up with her on their wedding day. Emma submits her resignation as guidance counselor, but as she is leaving the school, Will finds her and stops her with a kiss. She reveals to Will that she is a virgin, but does not go through with her plan to lose her virginity to him. At the end of the first season, she tells Will she has started dating a dentist named Carl Howell, and in the second season her relationship with Carl (John Stamos) blossoms to the point that they get married in Las Vegas in the episode "Special Education". It is subsequently revealed in the episode "Sexy" that her marriage with Carl is facing difficulties and has not been consummated. She admits that she still has feelings for Will, and she and Carl separate; he later requests an annulment of their marriage. She begins to get treatment for her OCD in "Born This Way". When the third season begins, she and Will are living together. In the mid-season episode "Yes/No", Will asks Emma to marry him, and she accepts. In the penultimate episode, "Nationals", Emma and Will have sex for the first time. After their first wedding falls through as she runs away after she and Finn lie about kissing, Emma and Will begin to date again. Will reproposes and they marry with all of the New Directions present.
caption: Jayma Mays portrays guidance counselor Emma Pillsbury
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