Lea Michele is reflecting on past dramas, and her efforts to rectify mistakes.
In a recent chat with Interview magazine, the Funny Girl star was asked about the reports and stories of alleged mean-spirited behavior on the set of Glee, with several cast members claiming Michele treated her co-stars poorly during the filming of the series.
"I think these past two years have been so important for everybody to just sit back and reflect," Michele shared, adding, "I did a lot of personal reach-outs."
"The most important thing was for everybody to just take a step back," she said. "More than anything, I’m so grateful to have this opportunity to apply the things that I’ve learned over the past ten-plus years in a positive way."
"What I told myself stepping into Funny Girl was, 'If I can’t take my role as a leader offstage as important as my role as a leader onstage, then I shouldn’t do this show.' Because that was always a struggle for me," she said. "So to have this opportunity now at 36 years old as a wife and a mother -- to step into this job that comes with so much pressure and a huge amount of responsibility -- was a very, very big achievement for me."
According to Michele, since the fallout from the Glee drama, she's learned that, "At the end of the day, what matters the most is how you make people feel."
"The conversations that I’ve had behind the scenes with some people were incredibly healing and very eye-opening for me," she explained. "I’ve been doing this for a really long time and I’m not going to ever blame anything on the things that I’ve been through in my life. But you also can’t ignore those experiences or deny them. They are a part of the patchwork of my life."
She went on to say that getting the chance to play Fanny Brice in Funny Girl seemed like an "opportunity to introduce people to who I am now."
She also reflected on how her life now -- and the positive impact of support network at home with her husband and family -- has made the experience much different from when she was working on Glee.
"I think about what the Glee days were like, just working so hard and having such pressure on my shoulders to keep that show afloat, and navigating through that whole experience at such a young age while also dealing with a really intense life trauma that happened at the same time," she said. "This is such a different experience. I’m finding so much joy in the connections I’m having with the people around me. That’s what’s giving me energy."
For more on Michele, check out the video below.
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