Lea Michele admits to ‘fractured’ relationship with ‘Glee’ cast after mean-girl criticism

Lea Michele isn’t sugarcoating her time on “Glee.”

The actress admitted Thursday that her then-boyfriend Cory Monteith’s 2013 death led to her having “fractured” relationships with her fellow cast members.

When “Therapuss” podcast host Jake Shane asked Michele, 38, whether she and her co-stars “banded together in a very tight-knit way” after the tragedy, she quickly replied, “No.”

The Broadway star clarified, “I think in some ways it did for certain people, but I think that, for me, it was so hard. I just completely broke. I was really in a one-track mind of just doing my job.

“It was way too much to try to process at a young age, but I’m very grateful for everyone there. Whether or not they know it, I personally felt a lot of support from everybody in the building helping me to get through.”

Michele, who played Rachel Berry on the six-season Fox show, specifically expressed gratitude to the crew members for “helping [her] get through” Monteith’s death at age 31.

She and the actor, who played Finn Hudson on “Glee,” had been dating for one year when he fatally overdosed on heroin in his hotel room in Canada.

“The [crew members] were holding me up so much as well as the people who were on the show,” Michele recalled of navigating her grief. “But a lot of people were gone by then, which was hard.” 

At the time, the Emmy nominee felt as if she “wasn’t allowed to stop” and “had to keep going.”

She explained, “If we didn’t show up for work, then people wouldn’t have work to go to. That was a lot of pressure for me. I had to put my stuff aside and show up so that everybody could just continue to work.”

Michele’s candid reflection of the “sad” and “depressing” time on set comes five years after she was called out for mean-girl behavior.

Samantha Ware, who played Jane Hayward in Season 6 of the musical dramedy, put her co-star on blast in June 2020 for allegedly making work a “living hell” for her.

The 33-year-old tweeted, “I believe you told everyone that if you had the opportunity you would ‘s–t in my wig!’ amongst other traumatic microaggressions that made me question a career in Hollywood.”

Michele, who publicly apologized in a lengthy Instagram statement, was also called out by Heather Morris and Amber Riley that same month.

Morris, 38, labeled Michele “very … unpleasant” to work with on Twitter (now X), while Riley, 39, told “Real Quick with Danielle Young” listeners she had heard from “a lot of black actors and actresses … being terrorized by the white girls that are the leads of the show.”

Michele’s “Spring Awakening” co-star Gerard Canonico also made headlines for claims that the “Scream Queens” alum was a “nightmare.”

Michele skirted around the scandal while speaking to Interview magazine about her “Funny Girl” role in 2023, saying, “It’s … helpful to have this opportunity to introduce people to who I am now.”

While the singer did not directly speak to her reputation in Thursday’s podcast episode, she did address longstanding rumors she is illiterate — and hilariously debunked them with proof that she can read.