Looking back, Ryan Murphy says Cory Monteith’s death probably should have ended Glee

Ryan Murphy said he would have Cory Monteith's fatal overdose differently today

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Looking back, Ryan Murphy says Cory Monteith’s death probably should have ended Glee
Cory Monteith, Ryan Murphy, and castmember Matthew Morrison Photo: Kevin Winter

Nearly a decade on from Cory Monteith’s fatal overdose, Ryan Murphy doesn’t think Glee should have continued on as a show following his death. Glee went on to film another two seasons after the tragedy.

“If I had to do it again, we would’ve stopped for a very long time and probably not come back,” Murphy shares on the “And That’s What You Really Missed” podcast (via the New York Post), hosted by Glee alums Jenna Ushkowitz and Kevin McHale.

“I would be like, ‘that’s the end,’” Murphy continues, adding, “Because you can’t really recover from something like that.”

The series did grapple with Monteith’s death one month after the fact, in the memorial episode “The Quarterback,” which saw his character Finn Hudson also die in-universe. The episode aired during the series’ fifth season.

Despite their ability to memorialize him onscreen, Murphy shares that it was difficult to handle such an unexpected loss without any preparation.

“It wasn’t, like, a normal death where someone is sick, and you can see them,” Murphy recalls of losing Monteith. “It happened so quickly with no warning,”

During the appearance, Murphy also discusses the prospect of a potential Glee reboot—be it a Broadway show or additional episodes. Per Murphy, there’s certainly a legacy to be explored, but not for a long while, and not without a very clear purpose.

“It’s sort of like an interesting legacy that I’m interested in doing in a positive way after sort of pausing for a while,” Murphy muses (per IndieWire). “But I don’t know. I just love what it says and what it did. And there will never be in my life another Glee, anything close to it, in terms of me feeling so close to it.”

28 Comments

  • gargsy-av says:

    “Ryan Murphy said he would have Cory Monteith’s fatal overdose differently today”He would have what?

  • ajvia12-av says:

    wait, they didn’t mention how much they Hate Ryan Murphy here today. I mean, until last month he was the uber-AV darling making all sorts of edgy, ridiculous, hammy and cheesy gender-bending representation shows, and they loved everything ever he looked at or sneezed on, but now he made Sexy Dahmer Beast and they’ve decided he’s retroactively the Worst, ever. Like, worse than Spacey, Weinstein and CK combined. But today: no snark, because he’s talking about someone who died from a drug overdose and since they cannot just outright BLAME Murphy for killing Cory (they can and probably will eventually, insinuating that he maybe pushed him too hard, or was needlessly glorifying psycopathic murderers and it upset Cory, or something) they went easy today.But give it a day, they’ll find something to hate him for more again-

  • electricsheep198-av says:

    I feel you could say that about any Ryan Murphy show. It should have stopped years earlier.

  • exileonmystreet-av says:

    The loving look back podcast schtick for this show strikes me as being in very poor taste. “Remember the time the mean racist girl and the crazy girl who drowned got in a fight over the pedophile who hanged himself? Or was that fight over the guy who OD’d?”I know people need to make a living, but this is some “Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?”-level disassociation.

    • sockpuppet77-av says:

      Reducing Nya to ‘the crazy girl who drowned’ seems mean spirited, like it was her fault she drowned saving her son. It was incredibly sad, regardless of the quality of the vehicle that made her famous.  Maybe that wasn’t what you were going for.  

      • clonktonk-av says:

        I agree it was her son’s fault. 

      • exileonmystreet-av says:

        My intention was to mimic the easy breezy tone of this podcast, but fill it with the infamous actual events that happened with this cast. My intention wasn’t to be mean about Nya, and I’m sorry that I was callous.

        • cosmicghostrider-av says:

          I’m sensitive about Nya cuz I have a lesbian friend who once shared what a big deal her in Glee was for representation back then. That does slip my mind at times. She was sad.

    • zacheslick-av says:

      Fuck off It was great show and I’d love a reboot or continuation of the show. 

  • dremiliolizardo-av says:

    So, he believes the show should have ended when one person on it tragically died young, but now that three have tragically died young, he’s up for more?I guess that is why Ryan Murphy is the God Emperor of tonal inconsistency.

  • usernameorwhatever-av says:

    I’m sure the producer of Dahmer has lots of great insights on when it’s in poor taste to mine real world deaths for frivolous entertainment.Do you think he reads the complaints from Dahmer victim family members and thinks to himself “I was able to make a TV show about the death of that dumb kid who worked for me. Why are they so upset about their brother or whatever?”

  • normchomsky1-av says:

    If only they all died in a Jim Jones-like scenario 

  • cordingly-av says:

    Ryan Murphy said he would have Cory Monteith’s fatal overdose differently todayDid Ryan Murphy have him killed?

    • jodyjm13-av says:

      Yeah, I realize the shoddy subheads have become a running joke around here, but that one is just so unfortunate it really ought to be corrected.

  • coatituesday-av says:

    I stopped watching the show a long time ago, and I don’t know how they dealt with Monteith’s death. It’s a hard call any time. West Wing did it well, though I really hope they got John Spencer’s family’s blessing on it. He’d died in real life, then there was a scene where Kristen Chenoweth discovers Leo dead in a hotel room during his campaign.News Radio did a good job dealing with Phil Hartmann’s death, at least in my opinion. The only sitcom episode that still makes me cry and laugh back and forth the whole time.
    Back in the olden days, on Alias Smith and Jones, Peter Duel had killed himself, and they just sort of rushed right in with a different actor to play Hannibal Smith.And there was Chico and the Man – after Freddie Prinze’s suicide, they went on with a few episodes, saying that Chico was in Mexico, I’m pretty sure. Which would be odd since Prinze was Puerto Rican.This has been TV Actors Who Died During Production.  And now back to trying not to watch election returns.

    • mytvneverlies-av says:

      They just switched a new Darren Stevens into Bewitched.I think that was because of illness though.

    • sockpuppet77-av says:

      I remember the show John Ritter was on when he died didn’t try to replace him and shifted their focus to grieving the loss of a family member, but it was supposed to be a family comedy and I don’t think it ever recovered.  

  • uselessbeauty1987-av says:

    It’s a show which should have probably ended after Season 3, given the increasingly tenuous and weird ways it kept bringing its original cast back in.

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