Lea Michele is opening up about how Cory Monteith’s death led to a “fractured” relationship with the rest of her Glee castmates.
“I was 26 and no one handed me a guidebook,” Michele told Therapuss host Jake Shane of grappling with grief on a public stage. “It was a fast education on more stuff than I could ever even process.”
Monteith and Michele were dating for over a year when the actor died suddenly from a drug overdose on July 13, 2013. Just one month later, Michele returned to set to film season 5 of Glee.
“If we didn’t show up for work then people wouldn’t have work to go to,” she explained. “And that was a lot of pressure for me, so I had to put my stuff aside and just show up, so that everybody could continue to work.”
FOX Image Collection via Getty
Lea Michele and Cory Monteith on ‘Glee’
“Do you feel as though you guys all banded together in a very tight-knit way?” Shane asked.
“No,” Michele replied. “I think it really fractured so much. I mean, I can’t speak for everyone — I think that maybe, in some ways, it did for certain people. But I think that for me, it was so hard to. I just completely broke.”
She continued, “I was really in a one-track mind of just doing my job. It was way too much to try to process at a young age.”
Despite throwing herself into the work, Michele noted that she still felt very “supported” by the cast and crew.
“I’m very grateful for everyone there, whether or not they know it. I personally felt a lot of support from everybody in the building helping me to get through,” she said. “Especially from the crew. The people that would be behind the camera every day— I would be looking at the camera but looking at the person behind it… I was looking at those people like they were holding me up, as well as the people who were on the show.”
But, noting that the original cast had graduated high school by that point in the story, and were often in separate storylines, she added, “A lot of people were gone by then, which was hard.”
As for where her relationships with her former costars stands now, Michele pointed to her recent reunion with Darren Criss and Dianna Agron, who were photographed attending Criss’ Broadway show, Maybe Happy Ending.
Carin Baer /FOX /everett
Dijon Talton, Cory Monteith, Harry Shum Jr, Mark Salling, and Heather Morris. Front row: Amber Riley, Matthew Morrison (kneeling), Jenna Ushkowitz, Kevin McHale, Naya Rivera, Lea Michele, Chris Colfer and Dianna Agron on ‘Glee’
“I see Darren all the time. He’s like my brother, and Dianna and I both live in the city now,” she said. “There is such a comfort because we all really did go through something that only we will ever understand. So I feel so safe with them and so comfortable. Family forever.”
Michele has previously been at the center of some controversy when it comes to her Glee cast relationships. During the early seasons of the show, Michele was rumored to be feuding with the late Naya Rivera (who died of accidental drowning in 2020).
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Michele’s former costar Samantha Ware has also accused her of making her life a “living hell” on the set of Glee.
“I believe you told everyone that if you had the opportunity you would ‘shit in my wig!’ amongst other traumatic microaggressions that made me question a career in Hollywood,” wrote Ware in 2020, prompting support from fellow alums Amber Riley, Heather Morris, and Alex Newell.
Michele said in 2023 that she has since done many “personal reach-outs” to try and make amends. “The conversations that I’ve had behind the scenes with some people were incredibly healing and very eye-opening for me,” she shared.
Watch Michele’s full conversation with Shane above.
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