Lea Michele Says Glee Cast Was “Fractured” After Cory Monteith’s Death

Lea Michele is opening up about life on the Glee set. In the May 8 episode of the Therapuss with Jake Shane podcast, the actor revealed that her relationship with the Glee cast was “fractured” following her late co-star and boyfriend Cory Monteith’s death.

Michele and Monteith, who played onscreen love interests Rachel Berry and Finn Hudson, dated in real life for over a year before Monteith died in July 2013, after filming wrapped on the show’s fourth season. Only a month later, Michele and most of the Glee cast returned to set to begin production on Season 5.

“I was 26, and no one handed me a guidebook,” she recalled about that time. “If we didn’t show up for work, then people wouldn’t have work to go to, 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.”

When Shane asked if the experience brought the cast closer, Michele said that wasn’t the case for her. “I think it really fractured so much,” she said. “I can’t speak for everyone — I think that maybe, in some ways, it did for certain people. But for me, it was so hard to. I just completely broke. 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.”

The Glee Cast Still Showed Support

However, Michele clarified that she “personally felt a lot of support” from the cast and crew, who were “helping [her] to get through” in the beginning stages. “I would be looking at the camera, but looking at the person behind it,” she explained. “They were holding me up so much as well as the people who were on the show, but a lot of people were gone by then, which was hard.”

For Seasons 4 and 5, Glee was essentially split into two storylines, with one covering the remaining New Directions members at McKinley High, and another focused on Rachel and her friends Kurt (Chris Colfer) and Santana (Naya Rivera) living in New York. This means that a large chunk of the original cast was not on the show anymore, only returning as occasional guest stars.

Now, Michele has been able to repair her friendships with some of the cast, having recently hung out with co-stars Darren Criss and Dianna Agron at Criss’ Broadway show Maybe Happy Ending. “It was so great,” she told Shane. “I see Darren all the time. He’s like my brother, and Dianna and I both live in the city now... I feel so safe with them and so comfortable, family forever.”