Yet again, someone has come forward with a new story about Lea Michele, 33, as the Glee star faces a Twitter-wide cancellation. This time, a former actress-turned-life coach named Monica Moskatow claimed that Lea allegedly slammed her appearance, after she was hired to play Lea’s doppelgänger for a Glee premiere party over 10 years ago. Lea would’ve been 23 years old. HollywoodLife has reached out to Lea’s rep on the actress’s allegations below, which have not been verified to be true:
“September 2009 I was hired to work at the premiere party for Glee at a high school,” Monica began in a comment that she left on Lea’s Instagram page on June 5. “They hired lookalikes of the shows characters to perform at the party. I was the Rachel Berry [Lea’s character on Glee] lookalike.”
“I didn’t know my character was the lead let alone who played her,” the look-alike actress continued. “When the actors arrived at the event and found out there were lookalikes of them Lea came searching for me. When she saw me she said, ‘oh my god! Could they have picked someone uglier!’” Here’s where the story gets interesting — according to the actress, Lea’s on-screen lover and eventual boyfriend, Cory Monteith, apparently came to comfort Monica.
Cory “saw the look on my face and said, ‘don’t listen to her she’s just jealous, you’re beautiful,’” Monica added in her comment, writing, “I never forgot that.” Cory, who played Finn Hudson on Glee, sadly died in 2013 from “combined heroin and alcohol toxicity,” the British Columbia Coroners Service had announced. Again, these are only Monica’s claims, which Lea has not commented on.
Amid the growing claims of Lea’s alleged bullying and bad behavior, a source close to Glee EXCLUSIVELY told HollywoodLife, “The ‘Glee’ set was very toxic overall. There were mean girls and lots of antics. It wasn’t a great work environment for anyone – it had nothing to do with Lea. It was the entire set that for many many years was a toxic one.”
https://twitter.com/Sammie_Ware/status/1267632171570745345
Allegations about Lea came forward after the former Broadway star tweeted on May 29, “George Floyd did not deserve this. This was not an isolated incident and it must end. #BlackLivesMatter.” Her former Glee co-star, Samantha Marie Ware, 28, didn’t appear to find this act of solidarity genuine. “LMAO remember when you made my first television gig a living hell?!?! Cause I’ll never forget. I believe you told everyone that if you had the opportunity you would ‘s*** in my wig!’ amongst other traumatic microaggressions that made me question a career in Hollywood,” the actress tweeted directly at Lea.
Lea released a lengthy apology afterwards, but that didn’t stop others from revealing their own past experiences of working with the actress. Elizabeth Aldrich, who worked as Lea’s understudy on the Broadway production of Ragtime in 1998, claimed that Lea “demeaned the crew and threatened to have people fired if she was in anyway displeased” (Lea didn’t respond to this accusation). Meanwhile, Lea’s other Glee co-star, Heather Morris, claimed Lea was “unpleasant to work with,” but seemed to encourage others not to “assume” too much about the actress.
Lea received further defense from Dean Geyer, who played her on-screen lover on Glee, in an EXCLUSIVE interview with HollywoodLife. Dean called his time with Lea “really positive” and remarked that she was “openly friendly to everybody [he] witnessed,” but clarified that he’s not “negating or questioning the validity of the experiences people have had and spoken out about.”