Controversies, casualties of ‘Glee’ explored in docuseries
“The Price of Glee,” which recently premiered on ID and Discovery+, gathers the most notable news coverage (positive and negative) around the once-beloved Fox series.
Though filmed without the participation of any members of the principal cast or creative team — Kevin McHale and Jenna Ushkowitz, who run a “Glee” podcast, respectively deemed the new series “trash” and urged viewers to “proceed with caution” — the three-part documentary recounts the dark shadows around some of its actors: Cory Monteith’s overdose,
Mark Salling’s arrest, Lea Michele’s bullying behavior, Naya Rivera’s tragic death, and Melissa Benoist’s allegations of domestic violence against Blake Jenner.
The docuseries attempts to assign blame for the various controversies and casualties of the cultural phenomenon. “Part of what has happened on this show is so incredibly toxic, and yet it was a giant hit that everybody was watching, including me,” says psychotherapist Stacy Kaiser.
While most of the included information will be familiar to former and still faithful Gleeks, the project did reveal some factoids in its first two episodes, including that social media fueled behind-the-scenes conflict.
Created by Ryan Murphy, “Glee” debuted in 2009, alongside the explosion of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr.
“It’s great that fans of a show can come together and connect over things, but the fighting began almost immediately,”
entertainment reporter Andy Swift remarks in the first episode. “Suddenly, with social media, you can track who the fans are really into because those actors will have the most followings.”
The docuseries also lays out how the show’s schedule took an unmentioned toll on the cast.
Like other TV shows with musical numbers, “Glee” actors split their time between recording songs, learning choreography and rehearsing entire sequences, in addition to filming each episode’s scenes — the latter of which regularly stretched past the usual workweek into Saturday mornings.
But the bigger the ratings grew, the more elaborate the routines became, and unlike other shows, the cast spent multiple hiatuses on national concert tours.
“They weren’t getting the time off — for the actors, it became almost a year-round job,” says former rigging gaffer J.A. Byerly, who adds that returning to work just weeks after Monteith’s death was particularly stressful — a decision made because the series was nearing the notable 100-episode mark, multiple crew members allege.
Fans regularly mobbed
the cast when they were shooting on location, and occasionally became invasive. Chris Colfer was kissed by a fan on the mouth without consent, and Monteith had a young woman stalking him.
The production even had to “build a wall from their trailers to the set that was like a tunnel so that the cast could travel safely without the tours bothering them or just people in the parking lot,” says Stephen Kramer Glickman, who filmed “Big
Time Rush” on the same studio lot.
Such privacy concerns left Monteith isolated, along with being exhausted by the show’s filming schedule and the nonstop headlines about his relationship with co-star Michele. “I remember him specifically saying, ‘I wouldn’t wish fame on my worst enemy,’ ” says Monteith’s former roommate Justin Neill.
Monteith was written out of numerous episodes of the fourth season to attend rehab, but overdosed four months later.
The docuseries also mentions the numerous other actors and crew members who tragically passed away during and after the show’s run, which reporter Swift called “rare” for any series.