A walk down memory lane. Lea Michele reminisced about her time filming Glee on the Thursday, January 16, episode of the “Showmance” podcast and revealed which scene featuring her late boyfriend, Cory Monteith, made her emotional after a rewatch.
The 33-year-old actress joined her former costars and podcast cohosts, Kevin McHale and Jenna Ushkowitz, to recap their time together on the former hit Fox series. Michele shared that the scene in the pilot episode where Finn (Monteith) saves Artie (McHale), who uses a wheelchair, from a Porta Potty held a new meaning for her years later.
“The moments that made me so emotional were not anything that ever has made me emotional before about the show,” the Broadway star, who portrayed Finn’s love interest Rachel Berry, explained. “One of them was when he [Monteith] took you [McHale] out of the Porta Potty. There were so many moments that you see the whole arc of a character for a whole season in one moment. Him taking you out of the bathroom, and you see Finn’s heart. Oh my God.”
McHale agreed that the scene was one of his “most memorable parts” of filming the pilot and one of his first bonding moments with Monteith.
“He and I are like, ‘This is insane, isn’t it? We are going to remember this forever. This is special.’ It was just the two of us. I’m like, ‘Yeah, this is really wild,'” the Boychoir star, 31, recalled.
Michele met Monteith on the set of Glee in 2009 and dated him from 2012 until his death at the age of 31 from an accidental drug overdose in July 2013. The Scream Queens alum has poignantly honored her late boyfriend on social media every year on the anniversary of his death.
The Monte Carlo star opened up about how serious her relationship with Monteith became in an interview with Glamour UK in February 2014.
“We talked about a lot of things. We talked about children and what we would look like when we grew old, and who would be fat and how we would stay thin,” Michele said at the time. “We talked about where we wanted to go and what we wanted to do. We were done. We were it.”
She added: “When you’re at that place in your life with someone, you talk about everything. But today I feel like I was given the best part of Cory, and I’m thankful for that.”
One month later, Michele explained in an interview with Seventeen Magazine that the pair’s bond was strong despite Monteith’s substance abuse struggles.
“I only have happy memories of Cory. He was not his addiction – unfortunately, it won,” Michele said. “But that wasn’t who he was. Cory made me feel like a queen every day. From the minute he said, ‘I’m your boyfriend,’ I loved every day, and I thank him for being the best boyfriend and making me feel so beautiful.”
After Monteith’s death, Michele began dating businessman Zandy Reich in 2017 before the couple announced their engagement in April 2018. The duo tied the knot in March 2019 in an intimate ceremony in California.
