Glee's Samantha Ware Shares More Details About Lea Michele's 'Bullying' Behaviour On Set & It Sounds Really Awful
In a new interview, Glee’s Samantha Ware has shared more details around how Lea Michele allegedly bullied her on-set. Chatting with Variety, the 28-year-old said she knew from the first day Michele didn’t like her.
“It was after I did my first performance, that’s when it started – the silent treatment, the stare-downs, the looks, the comments under her breath, the weird passive-aggressiveness,” she said. “It all built up.”
Ware continued, saying Michele had once even threatened to have her fired in front of the whole cast.
“When you’re shooting a scene, sometimes the camera is on you and sometimes it’s not, but you still have to be in the scene,” Ware says. “The camera wasn’t on us, so it’s not like we had to give a full throttle performance, but apparently, I was goofing around when the camera wasn’t on me, and she took that as me being disrespectful to her.”
Ware said no one else seemed to mind – not even the director – so she was shocked when Michele waited until the scene was over, stopped in the centre of the stage and did a ‘come here’ gesture “like how a mother does to the child” and told her to “come here right now”.
“I said ‘no,’ and that’s when she decided to threaten my job, and said she would call [creator and producer] Ryan Murphy in to come and fire me.”
After the incident, Ware said she was terrified. “It’s scary. For the full week, I was thinking I’m probably going to get an email and I might not be able to do the last three episodes, or I might not be able to sing another song,” she said.
Ware also elaborated on her claim that Michele had once threatened to “sh*t in her wig”, saying that it happened during a cast screening during a set lunch break. “She had an issue because I had laughed (when watching a scene) and that’s when the ‘I’m going to sh*t in your wig’ comment happened,” Ware said. According to Ware, Michele said it loudly enough for everyone to hear.
“Some chuckled and some gasped. It was mortifying. The whole point was for her to embarrass me. People heard her, but no one was going to stand up to her,” she added.
It was Ware who first brought light to Michele's behaviour. Following Michele’s tweet in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, Ware tweeted: "Remember when you made my first [television] gig a living hell?!?! Cause [I'll] never forget," Ware wrote in all caps. "I believe you told everyone that if [you] had the opportunity you would 'shit in my wig!' Amongst other traumatic microaggressions that made me question a career in Hollywood."
Since then, countless former co-stars and others in the industry have come forward detailing Michele's less-than-impressive behaviour on set.
Former Glee co-star Heather Norris said of Michele: ''Was she unpleasant to work with? Very much so; for Lea to treat others with the disrespect that she did for as long as she did, I believe she SHOULD be called out" while actor Dabnier Snell, who appeared in one ep of Glee, tweeted: “GIRL YOU WOULDNT LET ME SIT AT THE TABLE WITH THE OTHER CAST MEMBERS CAUSE 'I DIDNT BELONG THERE' F--K YOU LEA.'”
And while Glee co-star Amber Riley has remained mum apart from tweeting some telling GIFs, this week an awkward-as-hell interview of Riley and Michele resurfaced, in which Riley looks to be giving Michele a death stare after Michele tells the interviewee they’re all mates. You can watch that cringe-fest go down here.
Michele, who’s pregnant with her first child, was dropped from her partnership with HelloFresh on June 2. "HelloFresh does not condone racism nor discrimination of any kind. We are disheartened and disappointed to learn of the recent claims concerning Lea Michele," the company tweeted. "We take this very seriously, and have ended our partnership with Lea Michele, effective immediately."
Michele's reps declined to comment on the new accusations in the Variety story, but she did post an apology on Instagram on June 3, you can read it in full above.
Main Image Credit: Licensed by Getty
