‘Glee’ Stars Talk Rewatching Naya Rivera and Cory Monteit…
Former Glee stars Kevin McHale and Jenna Ushkowitz are reflecting on watching their late costars, Cory Monteith and Naya Rivera, on screen again.
In the latest episode of the How Rude, Tanneritos! podcast with Jodie Sweetin and Andrea Barber, the Glee alums talked about revisiting the Ryan Murphy-created musical dramedy for their own podcast, And That’s What You REALLY Missed.
“The experience itself was healing and therapeutic in a lot of ways and really surprising,” Ushkowitz said near the six-minute mark linked here. “I think both Kevin and I would say our expectations for the later seasons were definitely, you know, a tad lower. And we were pleasantly surprised. We really enjoyed watching it and kind of watching it from an outside lens of, like, having space away from the show.”
Monteith, who played Finn, a quarterback-turned-singer, died at age 31 from an overdose in 2013 during the show’s season 4 production.
Rivera, whose role as cheerleader Santana helped further LGBTQ+ representation on television, died at age 33 in 2020 in an accidental drowning during a boating trip with her then-four-year-old son, Josey.
McHale recalled that they had once tried to rewatch the series for a different podcast called Showmance, but stopped following Rivera’s death.
“When Naya passed away, we were like, ‘We can’t do this anymore.’ We just ended the show,” McHale said near the 29-minute mark. “And it was hard for me to even watch Cory. Like, when we started that version of [the podcast], that was the first time we’d rewatched any of it. And up to that point, I couldn’t really listen to the songs he was singing on, but watching it really helped get through it.”
The actor said that when the opportunity came to host a new iteration of the podcast, he and Ushkowitz made sure to “set some parameters” for themselves and get clear on the “intention” of why they want to move forward with the rewatch podcast.
“That, for me at least, helped going back into it and having it be like a celebration of these people: and they’re all talented,” he continued.
“Obviously, some moments it’s hard, especially with the storylines or the songs they’re singing … But at the same time, and I think the overwhelming sense for me was that it really is a gift that we get to watch this and we got so many moments of how great they are as people shine through as in their performances as characters, and that has been like a really, obviously it’s hard, some episodes are easier than others, but it has been another really nice surprise of doing all of this.”
Ushkowitz said rewatching the show, which ran for six seasons from 2009 to 2015, made her “appreciate the talent and the commitment” from her fallen costars.
”I just appreciate their talent more in addition to loving the humans that they were,” she mused. “[The podcast] gives [fans] a new place of healing. And I think for Cory, especially, we had to mourn all that in the show, like while we were filming it and move on without him in the show. So it is very difficult.”
Ushkowitz also said she learned to give the cast and crew more “grace” for how “off the rails” the show’s environment became after losing Monteith, whose death was honored in the season four tribute episode, “The Quarterback.”
“I was very forgiving in the storylines and in the characters and where we were the season after he passed and after his character passed,” she noted. “Everything was a little bit unhinged, there was a lot of uncertainty. There was just a little bit of, like, people checking out and you’re like, ‘Well, this is when we all flew off the rails a little bit.’ But we were like, ‘Wow, let’s give ourselves and everybody else around us the grace that we deserved what we were going through’ in hindsight. Like, we could see that now.”
“Going through it all in this process has definitely helped us put feelings to names and, and to, to moments in time. So that was really helpful for us, and I’m grateful for it,” she concluded.