#Glee Star Says Cast Was ‘Very Scared’ to Report Lea Michele for On-Set Bullying

During a recent podcast, Glee star Heather Morris claimed that bullying on set by Lea Michele should have been stopped there and then, but “many people were very scared.” Speaking on Danny Pellegrino’s Everything Iconic podcast, she explained how she and other members of the cast who were aware of what was happening should have done more to “step up” and put an end to it.

It is almost a year ago that Michele’s former co-star Samantha Marie Ware made a post on Twitter that opened up a whole can of worms the series’ lead would have probably rather kept sealed. In the post she said, “LMAO REMEMBER WHEN YOU MADE MY FIRST TELEVISON GIG A LIVING HELL?!?! CAUSE ILL NEVER FORGET. I BELIEVE YOU TOLD EVERYONE THAT IF TOU HAD THE OPPORTUNITY YOU WOULD “SHIT IN MY WIG!” AMONGST OTHER TRAUMATIC MICROAGRESSIONS THAT MADE ME QUESTION A CAREER IN HOLLYWOOD.” The post led to other cast members recounting incidents or at least suggesting they had experienced similar issues.
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During the podcast, Heather Morris said, “We absolutely could have stepped up and gone to the Fox execs and said how we felt about the situation, and nobody really did. […] I think many people were very scared. I know, genuinely, I didn’t feel like it was my place. And I don’t know why, because I was a cast member just like everybody else, and we all deserve to feel comfortable on a set.”

During the podcast, Morris also elaborated on some of the things she had previously said about Lea Michele, particularly in reference to comments made last year when she said that the star was “unpleasant to work with”. Her comments at the time were meant to be pretty self-explanatory without going into specific details, but there were some who wanted her to be clearer about what had happened between them. “People were like, this is so f*ing cryptic, why don’t you just go and say it? I’m like, guys, she’s pregnant, and all this stuff is going around, and it’s true, and I don’t know if maybe we were victims of bullying and that’s a typical victim thing to do is to blame yourself.”

The revelations led to Michele losing a number of high profile sponsorship and partnership contracts, including her deal with HelloFresh, but the fall out had other connotations, not least for Naya Rivera. The actress, who played Santana in the series and died in a tragic boating accident last year, had been the subject of years of speculation about a “fued” between her and Michele, and was constantly hounded by gossip column writers over it. On that point, Morris added “Mostly, though, I’m sad that there is finally vindication at last for Naya Rivera… It sucks she isn’t here to feel that vindication herself.”

Many people will say that truth will out in the end, and it seems that in many ways it did, but the whole story, similar to the recent revelations about Joss Whedon, only serves to prove once again that until people are brave enough to talk about these incidents, they can cause a lot of damage that the outside world never know a thing about.

Topics: Glee