Samantha Marie Ware Just Gave More Details About What Happened Between Her and Lea Michele
Actor Samantha Marie Ware made headlines earlier this month when she called out her former Glee costar, Lea Michele, for making her experience on the show a “living hell.” This all started after Michele tweeted a message of support for Black Lives Matter in light of the death of George Floyd at the hands of police. “George Floyd did not deserve this. This was not an isolated incident and it must end. #BlackLivesMatter,” Michele tweeted.
But it appeared Ware thought this message was hollow, and she called Michele out accordingly. “REMEMBER WHEN YOU MADE MY FIRST TELEVISION GIG A LIVING HELL?!?! CAUSE ILL NEVER FORGET. I BELIEVE YOU TOLD EVERYONE THAT IF YOU HAD THE OPPORTUNITY YOU WOULD ‘SHIT IN MY WIG!’ AMONGST OTHER TRAUMATIC MICROAGRESSIONS THAT MADE ME QUESTION A CAREER IN HOLLYWOOD,” she tweeted on June 1.
Other Glee actors, including Alex Newell and Amber Riley, seemingly corroborated Ware’s story by posting telling response GIFs.
Riley eventually gave a verbal statement, saying the Glee set was not the “most comfortable environment” but that she wasn’t “going to say Lea Michele is racist.” Heather Morris, another Glee vet, echoed a similar sentiment, saying Michele was “unpleasant” to work with.
Michele issued a lengthy apology in light of Ware’s accusations, writing, “When I tweeted the other day, it was meant to be a show of support for our friends and neighbors and communities of color during this really difficult time, but the responses I received to what I posted have made me also focus specifically on how my own behavior towards fellow cast members was perceived by them.”
Ware shaded this apology, slightly, tweeting on June 3, “Perceived? Purcieved? Purse? Open your purse??????????????” She then included a link to a GoFundMe for James Scurlock, a young man who was shot and killed in Omaha, Nebraska.
Now, Ware is opening up more about why she chose to speak up about Michele. “It shouldn’t have to take my tweet. When you tweet, ‘Black lives matter,’ that would mean you have an understanding of what that hashtag means, but it’s clear that it doesn’t,” Ware told Variety in an exclusive interview. “Does Lea even know what a microaggression is? I don’t know. All that her apology did was affirm that she hasn’t learned anything. Am I calling Lea a racist? No. Does Lea have racist tendencies? I think Lea suffers from a symptom of living in this world in an industry that is tailored to white people.”
On that note, though, Ware told Variety she did find Michele’s "shit in my wig" comment racially charged, noting that “Black women historically are known for their wigs.”
Ware says that specific comment, which went viral after she tweeted it, happened during a private screening on the Glee set. “She had an issue because I had laughed [when watching a scene] and that’s when the ‘I’m going to shit in your wig’ comment happened,” Ware told Variety. “Some chuckled and some gasped. It was mortifying. The whole point was for her to embarrass me. People heard her, but no one was going to stand up to her.”
Ware says there was a cult of silence around Michele’s behavior on the set. “Everyone minded their business or said, ‘I’m sorry, I wish I had the power to stop this, but this is just the way it is, and this is just how it’s been’–which means I wasn’t the first person to have been in that situation,” she tells the publication. “…Lea’s actions were nothing new, so I guess since it was such a common thing, my case didn’t seem like that big of a deal. I remember the first day I actually spoke up and unfortunately no one did anything. They just shrugged it off, like ‘That’s her.’ No one was stopping these things, which is an issue because the environment was helping perpetuate this abuse.”
The 28-year-old outlines several interactions between herself and Michele in the article. During one, Ware says, Michele apparently threatened to have the actor fired. “When you’re shooting a scene, sometimes the camera is on you and sometimes it’s not, but you still have to be in the scene,” Ware tells Variety. “The camera wasn’t on us, so it’s not like we had to give a full throttle performance, but apparently, I was goofing around when the camera wasn’t on me, and she took that as me being disrespectful to her.”
Ware continued, “[Michele] waited until the scene was over and she stopped in the middle of the stage and did a ‘come here’ gesture, like how a mother does to their child.” When Ware said “no,” Michele then reportedly threatened to “call Ryan Murphy in to come and fire me.”
"It’s scary. For the full week, I was thinking I’m probably going to get an email and I might not be able to do the last three episodes, or I might not be able to sing another song,” Ware says of the experience. “When I tried to speak up for myself, [Michele] told me to shut my mouth. She said I don’t deserve to have that job. She talked about how she has reign. And here’s the thing: I completely understood that, and I was ready to be like, ‘This is your show. I’m not here to be disrespectful.’ But at that point, we were already past the respect and she was just abusing her power.”
Ware says she “knew from day one” that Michele didn’t like her: “It was very evident…. It was after I did my first performance, that’s when it started–the silent treatment, the stare-downs, the looks, the comments under her breath, the weird passive aggressiveness. It all built up.”
Read Samantha Marie Ware’s full account of her Glee experience on the Variety website.
Originally Appeared on Glamour
