If Ryan Murphy could redo one thing about his hit series “Glee,” he wouldn't necessarily have addressed the death of its star Cory Monteith on screen so soon.
Monteith died at the age of 31 of a drug overdose in 2013, and his co-stars mourned his character's sudden passing in a tribute episode in Season Five of the series titled "The Quarterback."
While appearing on the podcast "And That’s What You REALLY Missed" this week, Murphy recalled the difficult situation that he found himself in when Monteith passed away and revealed that he wishes he had pressed pause on doing a tribute episode just months after Monteith died.
“I’ve thought a lot about that recently and I would not have done that (episode) now. I just would not have done it. I felt like it was way too raw and way too soon,” the 56-year-old said.
Murphy caught up with "Glee" stars Kevin McHale and Jenna Ushkowitz during the latest episode of their podcast and reflected on how difficult the months leading up to Monteith’s death were.
“I had no idea that he had a drug problem. I was naive. I didn’t know,” he said. “I was the person who had to lead the intervention not knowing what to do or what to say. I was just desperate for him to live.”
After consulting several members of his team, Murphy had to decide whether or not to do a tribute episode and was nervous about ending the show since so many jobs were on the line.
“Do you keep it going or do you cancel it? Of course there’s no right answer,” he said. “I remember after many conversations from a lot of people weighing in, we made the decision to keep it going.”
Faced with the decision of how to structure the episode, Murphy decided to tackle things head-on and make it a tribute to Monteith’s character Finn.
“I remember even then thinking, ‘Ok well if we’re gonna do this, people are gonna have a lot of feelings,’” he said. “I was in such a blur of grief to be honest and so devastated by his death.”
Murphy said he had a grief counselor on set for the stars in case they wanted to talk to someone, and gave everyone the option to opt out of the episode if they wanted to. However, McHale and Ushkowitz said no one was ready to talk it out at that point and they felt like they needed to do the episode for Monteith.
“It just felt like an impossible corner we were all put in. There’s no right or wrong (answer in this situation),” Ushkowitz said.
McHale recalled one moment of filming where he broke down and had to leave the room.
“I remember the camera turned on me and I just got up out of the wheelchair and walked out of the scene. And I was just outside the stage just losing it crying,” he said.
Murphy, who revealed that he's only watched the episode once, said he wishes he had insisted on taking a year or at least six months off from filming.
"Now if this had happened, I would be like, 'That's the end because you can't really recover from something like that," he said.
Murphy then asked the actors what they think he should have done and they agreed that it was an impossible situation to navigate.
"I don't know because creatively, I don't know how you get around it unless you do address it," McHale said.
Ushkowitz agreed and said, "And it also feels like an elephant in the room if you don’t address it."
Either way, the stars and Murphy agreed that once Monteith died, the vibe on set shifted.
"All of us did know that when that happened, I think our hearts all kind of broke and we were kind of done. Even though it was not said, we were like, 'OK, well it's gone. The spirit of joy of it has left the building,'" Murphy said.