Lea Michele Faces Backlash from Glee Co-Stars After Tweet in Support of Black Lives Matter

Sometimes the best of intentions can have the most unexpected consequences. In this case, it was the cast of “Glee” — in particular three black members from the show’s sprawling cast across six seasons — who took serious issue with Lea Michele chiming in on the ongoing Black Lives Matter movement in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.

“George Floyd did not deserve this. This was not an isolated incident and it must end,” Michele tweeted on Friday, followed by the BLM hashtag.

Without addressing the ongoing civil unrest over Floyd’s killing, one of Michele’s former co-stars instead appeared to take issue with Michele injecting herself into a conversation about how people treat one another at all, considering how she claims Michele treated her during their time together on the show.

“Remember when you made my first television gig a living hell?” she wrote on Monday night in response to Michele’s tweet. “I believe you told everyone that if you had the opportunity you would ‘shit in my wig!’ amongst [sic] traumatic microaggressions that made me question a career in Hollywood.”

Ware joined the cast of “Glee” during its final season in 2015 as a member of glee club New Directions. Another latecomer to the “Glee” family was among the first to back her up.

Alex Newell (“Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist”) joined the show in the fourth season before becoming a series regular in Season 5. Not only did he echo Yvette Nicole Brown’s support, but he quickly shared a meme of RuPaul looking on carefully through binoculars.

Stories have circulated for years about issue and friction among that early cast, in particular circling the de facto OG female leads, Michele, Amber Riley and Naya Rivera. Rivera talked about her own issues with Michele in her bombshell 2016 memoir “Sorry Not Sorry.”

“Soon, she started to ignore me, and eventually it got to the point where she didn’t say a word to me for all of Season 6,” Rivera write, per TVLine. That would put her greatest point of tension with Michele in line with when Ware says Michele was making set life difficult for her as well.

Riley, meanwhile, jumped into the fray Monday night as well with memes of herself, including one with her pointedly raising her hand as if she most definitely had something to add. The rivalry between her and Michele was reportedly not just on the screen.

While she was clearly willing to sip the tea and made it patently clear that there was some tea, fans were left frustrated as Riley did not immediately start spilling said tea.

Instead, she made a concerted effort to refocus the conversation even on her feed to the larger issues in the world with calls to “defund the police” and “prosecute killer cops” with her own support of the Black Lives Matter movement.

There have been daily protests — both violent and non-violent — since the death of George Floyd on May 25. The innocent black man was handcuffed and pinned face-down on the ground with multiple offers kneeling on his body.

Former officer Derek Chauvin had his knee pressed against Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes while he pleaded with the officers and repeated that he couldn’t breathe, including several minutes after he’d stopped responding at all. All the while, people at the scene were pleading with the officers to let him up, or at least let him breathe.

With Floyd’s final moments caught on camera, Chauvin has since been arrested and charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. The other three officers involved have been fired but not charged, though charges are being considered.

In an independent autopsy at the insistence of Floyd’s family, his cause of death was ruled to be “homicide caused by asphyxia.” His cries of “I can’t breathe” have become a rallying cry in nationwide (and now global) protests over generations of racial inequality and injustice.

“Glee” fans were quick to praise all three of Michele’s co-stars for speaking their own truths — or at least hinting at them — in regards to their experiences on set. Michele has not responded to any of the online chatter, that saw both her and Riley’s names trending high on Twitter.

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