Former Glee star Heather Morris has spoken out about Lea Michele’s unsavoury on set behaviour during the filming of the iconic series while admitting the cast “could have stepped up”.
Speaking in an interview on the Everything Iconic With Danny Pellegrino podcast, the 34-year-old actress spoke about why she and the rest of the Glee cast failed to speak up about Lea during filming.
“I remember getting so much shade and people were like, ‘Why don’t you go out and say it?’ And I’m like, ‘Guys, she’s pregnant and all this stuff is going around,’” Heather recalled about how the controversy exploded on social media.
“And it’s true, I don’t know if maybe we were victims of bullying, and it’s a very victim thing to do to blame yourself, which is what people were saying, but … the only person who was honest about it was Naya [Rivera].”
Heather added that “it was something that was very hush-hush on set, and now you see all these things coming out with these bigger names who were very disrespectful and mistreated a lot of people.”
“We absolutely could have stepped up and gone to the Fox execs and said how we felt about the situation, but no one did,” she recalled. “I think many people were very scared, and I know, genuinely, I felt like it wasn’t my place, and I don’t know why because I was a cast member.”
Morris reasoned that she and fellow cast members may have remained silent due to the death of co-star and Lea’s boyfriend Cory Monteith from a drug overdose in 2013.
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“We all got close with Lea at different points, and then we all weren’t as close with her,” Heather said.
“So there’s that human element to understanding who this person is, growing with that person, seeing her try to become better and taking care of herself after Cory’s past. It was just the elephant in the room.”
It comes following other damning comments from Morris and other cast members about Michele’s bad behaviour over the years, where Heather claimed that the star – who played Rachel Berry – was “unpleasant” to work with.
— heather (@HeatherMorrisTV) June 3, 2020
“Let me be very clear, Hate is a disease in America that we are trying to cure, so I would never wish for hate to be spread to anyone else,” she wrote at the time.
“With that said, was she unpleasant to work with? Very much so; for Lea to treat others with the disrespect that she did for as long as she did, I believe she SHOULD be called out.”
“And yet, it’s also on us because to allow it to go on for so long without speaking out is something else we’re learning along with the rest of society,” Heather continued. “But, at the current moment its implied that she is a racist and although I cannot comment on her beliefs, I think we’re assuming, and you know what happens when we all assume…”
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