Lea Michele had ‘eye-opening’ conversations after behavior backlash

Lea Michele has had a lot of “healing and eye-opening” conversations following the backlash about her alleged behaviour on ‘Glee‘.

The 36-year-old actress was accused in 2020 of making Samantha Marie Ware’s time on the show a “living hell”, while Heather Morris slammed her co-star as “unpleasant” to work with, and while Lea apologised publicly at the time, she has now revealed she took the time to “sit back and reflect” on what people said to her when she reached out about the allegations.

She told Interview magazine: “I think these past two years have been so important for everybody to just sit back and reflect.

“I did a lot of personal reach-outs. But the most important thing was for everybody to just take a step back.

“At the end of the day, what matters the most is how you make people feel. And you have to put aside your feelings.

The conversations that I’ve had behind the scenes with some people were incredibly healing and very eye-opening for me.

“I’ve been doing this for a really long time and I’m not going to ever blame anything on the things that I’ve been through in my life. But you also can’t ignore those experiences or deny them. They are a part of the patchwork of my life.”

The ‘Scream Queens’ star – who has son Ever, two, with husband Zandy Reich – hopes her turn on Broadway as Fanny Brice in ‘Funny Girl’ will allow people to see how she has moved on and is a different person now.

She said: “When I got the call that I was going to play Fanny Brice, I said, ‘Okay, this could be really big for my career, but it’s also helpful to have this opportunity to introduce people to who I am now.’

“What I told myself stepping into ‘Funny Girl’ was, ‘If I can’t take my role as a leader offstage as important as my role as a leader onstage, then I shouldn’t do this show.’ Because that was always a struggle for me.

“So to have this opportunity now at 36 years old as a wife and a mother — to step into this job that comes with so much pressure and a huge amount of responsibility — was a very, very big achievement for me.”