The New Directions stuck together in real life too, with Glee alum Kevin McHale revealing Naya Rivera and Jenna Ushkowitz once held an intervention to address his use of steroids.
The 35-year-old actor, who played Artie Abrams on the hit Fox series, revealed his costars confronted him about his drug use while having dinner with Cory Monteith in 2010.
“I think we were filming two episodes [of Glee] at the same time, [and] in the middle of it, flying to England to [perform on X-Factor],” he recalled on his and Ushkowitz’s “And That’s What You REALLY Missed” podcast on Monday, June 26. “And I was sick as a dog on all kinds of medicine including prednisone, which is a steroid, and it turned me into a monster.”
While the prescription gave him the “courage” to “fight” for his solo in the show’s season 2 “Thriller/Heads Will Roll” mashup, Ushkowitz, 37, and Rivera noticed that the medicine was changing his behavior for the worse.
“You were all like, ‘So, hey, so why are you taking these steroids?’ And I’m like, ‘Well, ‘cause I’m sick. I’m supposed to take them,’” McHale noted. “[You’re] like, ‘But it’s not the antibiotic, right?’ And I’m like, ‘No.’ You’re like, ‘OK, I think you should stop taking them.’”
Despite having a few steroids left to take, the Texas native took his castmates’ advice and laid off the prescription. “[Jenna said], ‘Yeah, you’re not sleeping. You’re acting crazy. You need to stop taking them.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, I think you’re right,’” McHale added. “I hadn’t slept in days. I was losing my mind.”
While he is still close with Ushkowitz — they launched their podcast in October 2022 — Rivera died at the age of 33 in July 2020 after saving her son, Josey, from drowning during a boating trip in Lake Piru, California.
McHale isn’t the only former Glee cast member to struggle with substance abuse. Monteith died of an accidental drug overdose at the age of 31 in July 2013. The British Columbia Coroners Service confirmed in a statement at the time that the Canada native “died of a mixed drug toxicity, involving heroin and alcohol.”
The podcast cohosts have been candid about the loss over the years, as Ushkowitz exclusively told Us Weekly in November 2022 that she felt like “when Cory died, the show died with him in many ways.” She added: “It became a different show … it was really hard to do and it was never the same, for me at least.”
Glee ran for six seasons from 2009 to 2015, with Monteith’s character, Finn Hudson, being killed off during the show’s fifth season.
McHale, for his part, told Us he once received “flack” for voicing the same opinion about the show post-Monteith. “People on Twitter and all these things were saying that I was, like, talking crap about the show,” he shared. “I’m like, ‘No, no, no. I just said the show was never the same after Cory died because obviously it was not.’”
