Lea Michele Pushes ‘Glee’ Comeback

Lea Michele and Cory Monteith Image by Getty Images

By Anne Cohen July 22, 2013

Rejoice, Gleeks!

Despite rumors that “Glee” would be cancelled in the aftermath of Cory Monteith’s death on July 13, Fox TV announced on Friday that the show would go on, albeit delayed.

According to show creator Ryan Murphy, the final decision to continue was taken by Lea Michele, the show’s star who had been dating Monteith on and off-screen.

“The person who made the decision was Lea, who felt that the best thing for the cast and crew was to be together and to get back to work,” Murphy said.

“We decided to do that with Lea’s blessing and we’re going to go back to work and have grief counselors on the set for two weeks because people are really hurting.”

According to the New York Daily News, Murphy revealed he would have cancelled the show if Michele, 26, hadn’t felt up to continuing.

“She is sort of the show, so what do you do?” he said.

“She’s handled this with so much humanity and grace, and she’s also handled this in a way where she’s trying to look out for 500 other people affected by him and who have mortgages to pay and families to feed.”

“Glee” will return to Fox on September 26. A tribute episode to Monteith is in the works for sometime in the season.

Anne Cohen was the Forward’s deputy digital media editor. When she’s not looking for the secret Jewish history of Voodoo in New Orleans, or making lists about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, she writes for The Assimilator. She graduated from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism with an M.S. magazine concentration in 2012.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO