GleeksThe Good and Bad! Everything the ‘Glee’ Cast Has Said on Working on the Show: Quotes

Lea Michele

Lea spoke about *those* Glee bullying allegations to The New York Times, which she said prompted an “intense time of reflection” about her conduct at work. “I really understand the importance and value now of being a leader,” she explained. “It means not only going and doing a good job when the camera’s rolling, but also when it’s not. And that wasn’t always the most important thing for me.”

Additionally, she spoke about her time on the show in an interview with BUILD in 2019. “It [was] such an honor to be a part of a show that was so fun and funny and entertaining, but also so important.”

According to Lea, since the fallout from the Glee drama, she’s learned that, “At the end of the day, what matters the most is how you make people feel.”

“The conversations that I’ve had behind the scenes with some people were incredibly healing and very eye-opening for me,” she explained in a chat with Interview magazine. “I’ve been doing this for a really long time and I’m not going to ever blame anything on the things that I’ve been through in my life. But you also can’t ignore those experiences or deny them. They are a part of the patchwork of my life.”

Dianna Agron

Diana, who played Quinn, spoke about her Glee experience in an interview with Glamour from April 2022.

“This was my dream job. I came to L.A. and told anybody who would listen, ‘I’m gonna find a musical, I want to find a musical,'” she began. “I grew up on musicals like Funny Face and Singing in the Rain, and American in Paris, so the fact that I found it and found such wonderful experiences in that space, just feel as absolutely what I was meant to do first and what was meant to guide me and teach me.”

She continued, “I feel very lucky to have had that. I really, actually can’t believe it, looking back. Because when I was first telling people in Los Angeles — agents, friends, neighbors, whoever would listen—they all thought I was mad, that I wasn’t going to be able to find and achieve that because that’s not what was being made. So I think that’s very special.”

Naya Rivera

Naya Rivera, who sadly died in 2020, wrote about her experience with Lea Michele on the show in her 2016 book Sorry Not Sorry.

“One of the Glee writers once said that Lea and I were like two sides of the same battery and that about sums us up. We are both strong willed and competitive—not just with each other but with everyone—and that’s not a good mixture,” wrote Naya, whose character, Santana, was often at odds with Lea’s character, Rachel. “As the show progressed, though, that friendship started to break down, especially as Santana moved from a background character to one with bigger plot lines and more screen time. I think Rachel—erm, I mean Lea—didn’t like sharing the spotlight.”

Amber Riley

Amber Riley told Shadow And Act about her feelings about her character from Glee, Mercedes, in an interview from 2021.

“I feel like on that show, Mercedes played a heightened version of a stereotype and we know what that trope was,” she began. “But I feel like one thing that the show often did was that ‘Yes, we’re going to show that, but we’re also going to show what’s behind it.’”

“For me, I never felt like Mercedes got her full circle moment on that show where I could have dug deeper and showed who she was,” she continued. “But I do think she got to show her emotion and what she got to do through the music … I was always grateful [that] I was able to show that side of myself in my music. I definitely put my heart into it.”

Heather Morris

While appearing on the “Everything Iconic With Danny Pellegrino” podcast in May 2021, Heather alleged that Lea’s “scary” on-set behavior was “hush-hush” among the cast.

“Now you see all these things coming out with these bigger names who were very disrespectful and mistreated a lot of people,” the actress explained. “We absolutely could have stepped up and gone to the FOX execs and said how we felt about the situation, but no one did. … 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.”

Kevin McHale

“I never hated it…some people did,” Kevin explained in a March 2020 episode of the podcast Dating Straight. “I was the last one to break…. It was ‘What [Does] the Fox Say,’” he explained.

He explained what “breaking” meant in an interview with Buzzfeed from November 2022. “Being the last break, I don’t necessarily mean on camera. I was the last one to break, like, emotionally. I think because of the work schedule,” he explained.

“We were young, and we were silly and dumb, and on this wildly successful show,” he recalled. “It’s like you’re in college, it’s sort of like the same experience except we’re on TV. And I held it together, and then there was [“What Does the Fox Say?”] and there was another episode — I think they were back to back — where I was just like ‘What’s happening?!’ I also was not someone who would normally speak up or anything, and I think I started to get vocal at that point like, ‘Hey, guys, I know it’s not my place, I’m just here to make sure the check clears … but, like, what?!'”

Jenna Ushkowitz

“I think that parts of Glee definitely stand the test of time and I really appreciate that,” Jenna told Buzzfeed in November 2022. “I’m really happy that there’s this resurgence on Disney+ and Hulu, and kids are watching it again. It really warms my heart. We’ve just gotten so many messages along the way.”

“I think Glee hits on all these amazing progressive social issues in the show,” she continued. “And that’s a nod to [creator] Ryan Murphy, his choice, the things that were happening in the world, and things that impacted him in his life. I’m grateful that we were able to kind of push the bar during that time, and that people are still experiencing it that way.”