Kevin McHale started rumors that Lea Michele and Cory Monteith were dating — not knowing they actually were

The Glee star had no idea that his attempt at sparking fake romance rumors was undermined by an actual relationship

Kevin McHale is spilling ridiculous Glee tea.

On an episode of his podcast And That's What You Really Missed with his Glee costar Jenna Ushkowitz, the actor revealed that he attempted to start rumors about Lea Michele and Cory Monteith to make the TV show more popular.

He explained his master plan: “what if I pretend to take a picture of Jenna, and in the background, the very edge of frame, are Cory and Lea being like a little extra snuggly, or kissing or holding hands or something,” he recalled thinking. “I said, ‘I’ll put it up, and wait a little bit for people to notice, and then I’ll delete like I did something wrong.’ Because the intention was, we’re going to get rumors started that Cory and Lea are dating, and then people will watch the show, and then we’ll get to make more seasons of it.”

McHale also said that Michele was in on the plan from the beginning. “Lea was like, ‘yes, absolutely. Let’s do it,’” he said.

“And so I do it. I post it,” he continued. “And I’m like updating, and everyone’s like ‘what’s going on? Have people noticed?’ and I’m like ‘no, no one’s noticed, no one’s saying anything,’ and then at the first reference, [when] one person said something, I deleted it. And I remember checking Twitter, and then it got picked up, and was like all over [the internet].”

It wasn’t until much later that McHale discovered his costars were actually dating. “In January was the SAG awards,” he recalled. “And we were at the afterparty, and Lea sits me down, and she’s like, ‘Did you know, we had actually started dating then.’”

You can watch the full excerpt above.

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