Lea Michele remembers a dark time in her life during her Glee days.
Michele was a guest on a recent episode of Jake Shane’s Therapuss podcast where she opened up about “very different” life during the show’s run from 2009 to 2015, especially after her co-star Cory Monteith and real-life partner died in 2013 from a drug overdose, noting that her L.A. became a tourist attraction.
“There was also a tour bus that used to drive by my house, my publicist will probably want to cut this, but it was the tour of people that have died. And after everything happened, this bus would come by, it was like the you know, whatever, ‘Hollywood tragedy’ tour bus,” the actress-singer said. “Here I was, 26 years old, and this tour bus would go back by my house.”
“Every day I would hear these are the details and blah blah blah and eerie music would be playing from the tour bus and there I was just at home,” she said before adding that everyone behind the camera where the podcast was filming looked “shocked.”
Michele and Monteith played a on-and-off again couple, Rachel Berry and Finn Hudson, for four seasons on the Ryan Murphy-led Fox series. They also dated off-screen for more than a year until Monteith passed away.
The Funny Girl star noted that the tour bus experience was “so sad. It was so, so depressing.”
Jane Shane then asked Michele if the Glee cast was able to band together in a “tight-knit way” following the death of Monteith. Michele responded, “No, I think it really fractured so much. I mean, again, I can’t speak for everyone. I think that maybe in some ways it did for certain people.”
She continued, “For me, it was so hard. I just completely broke. I was in a really one-track mind of just doing my job. It was way too much to try to process at such a young age, but I’m very grateful for everyone there, whether or not they know it. I personally felt a lot of support.”
