More than a decade after her Glee co-star and then-boyfriend Cory Monteith unexpectedly passed away, Lea Michele revealed how the late actor’s death impacted her relationships with the rest of the popular TV show’s cast.
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During her recent appearance on the Therapuss podcast, Michele opened up to host Jake Shane about Monteith’s death.
“I was 26 and no one handed me a guidebook,” she recalled. “It was a fast education on more stuff than I could ever even process.”
Lea Michele and Cory Monteith were in a relationship for more than a year when the actor died on July 13, 2013, inside a Vancouver hotel. His cause of death was a drug overdose.
One month after Monteith’s death, Michele returned to the Glee set to film the fifth season.
“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.”
She also said, “So I had to put my stuff aside and just show up so everybody could continue to work.”
Shane asked, “Do you feel as though you guys all abnded together in a very tight-knit way?”
“No,” Michele answered. “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 do. I just completely broke.”
She then shared, “I was really in a one-track mind of just doing my job. I was way too much to try to process at a young age.”
Lea Michele Said She Was Still ‘Supported’ By the Cast and Crew Following Cory Monteith’s Death
Although her relationship with her co-stars was “fractured,” Lea Michele said she still felt supported by the Glee cast and crew.
“I’m very grateful for everyone there,” she pointed out. “Whether or not they know it. I personally felt a lot of support from everybody in the building, helping me to get through. Especially from the crew. The people that would be behind the camera every.”
She continued, “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.”
Michele then said that she has been able to reconnect with her Glee co-stars years after the show ended. She even mentioned a recent reunion with Darren Criss and Dianna Agron, who attended Criss’ Broadway show, Maybe Happy Ending.
“I see Darren all the time,” she added. “He’s like my brother, and Dianna and I both live in the city now. There is such 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.”