Lea Michele has been reflecting on the aftermath of Cory Monteith’s passing.
Glee actor Cory suddenly passed away in July 2013, at the age of 31. It was later confirmed that he died of a heroin and alcohol overdose, after a long battle with addiction. At the time of his passing, Cory was in a relationship with his co-star, Lea.
Now, over a decade after the loss of Cory, Lea has been opening up about how she had to grieve her partner publicly.
Speaking on the Therapuss podcast, the 38-year-old - who is now a mother-of-two with her husband, Zandy Reich - recalled that fans became more intrigued by her after Cory’s death.
“I had a tour bus that would go past my house in West Hollywood and you would hear, ‘Lea Michele [is] Rachel Berry on Glee,’ and then I would hear ‘Don’t Rain on My Parade’ playing while I’m sitting in my living room,” she explained, referring to the Funny Girl track that her character sang on Glee.
“It was the tour of people [who] have died, and after everything happened, this bus would come by,” Lea detailed.
“Here I was, 26 years old, this tour bus would go back by my house and every day I would hear these details, and eerie music would be playing from the tour bus,” she admitted.
The Broadway star went on to describe her time on Glee after Cory’s death as being “so sad”, and that she “completely broke”.
“No one handed me a guidebook. It was a fast education on more stuff than I could ever even process, but also, if we didn’t show up to work, then people wouldn’t have work to go to. That was a lot of pressure for me. So, I had to put my stuff aside so that everybody could continue to work,” she confessed.
Mentioning her co-stars, Lea added: “I think it really fractured so much. I can’t speak for everyone, but I think that maybe in some ways it [brought us closer]. For me, it was so hard.”
