Glee fans are already stocking up on tissues in anticipation of the show's Oct. 10 tribute to star Cory Monteith, who died in July at age 31 of heroin and alcohol toxicity. But as emotional as the experience of watching the episode is sure to be, it can't compare to Lea Michele's experience of filming. The 27-year-old actress and costar Matthew Morrison reportedly sat down with Australian magazine TV Week recently to talk about the moving hour, which airs Thursday on Fox at 8 p.m.
"I haven't seen it yet, but we did it because it was something we all needed to do together," the mag quotes Michele as saying in the interview, which was posted to TV Week's Facebook page. "I feel like, for me personally, I've lost two people: Cory and Finn. We had a beautiful memorial for Cory in the auditorium, and some of the cast members sang and people spoke about him. It only felt right that we would do the same thing for Finn, so I felt it was very therapeutic."
Asked if she ever considered quitting the show after losing Monteith — her boyfriend both on the series and in real life — Michele said, "Everyone is asking: 'Is it hard to do this? Is it hard to be back at work?' But the truth is, it's no harder at work than it is in life, so we might as well all be together as a family supporting each other to get through this together."
Glee's "Farewell to Finn" episode, titled simply "The Quarterback," features the brunette beauty performing a soulful rendition of Bob Dylan's "Make You Feel My Love." According to Morrison, it was one of the first songs they filmed — and it set the tone for everyone else.
"She did it so beautifully. After, she said something like, 'It can't be harder for anyone else than it was for me,'" Morrison told TV Week. "We knew we had to show up because our leader stepped forward and kind of gave permission to all of us to do it. I don't think we could have done it without her."
The magazine also quotes Michele talking about one of her favorite memories with Monteith, whom she started dating in 2012. "One day I came home and Cory was there with this plaque from the set that we always had in the glee club," she recalled. "And I said, 'What's this doing here?' And he said, 'I took it!' He said, 'This summer we are going to take it all over everywhere we go and take pictures of us with this plaque!' And that's what we did!"
"I really woke up every single day feeling like I was…in some sort of spell or something, that I was lucky enough to have him in my life," she continued. "I feel like what happened with Cory['s death] was [so small] in the scheme of who he was and his life. There was no greater man than Cory, so for the time we spent together, I consider myself very lucky."
