Ryan Murphy is frustrated that everyone only talked about the female feuds behind-the-scenes on “Glee”
It’s public knowledge at this point that Naya Rivera and Lea Michele had a strained relationship while shooting Glee. It happens. Can two women not love each other without it being a thing? Ugh. Anyway, Glee creator Ryan Murphy finally weighed in on the feud between the two actresses and said something that we’ve been dying to hear. Here’s what Ryan Murphy had to say about the Naya/Lea feud.
In an interview for E! News, Ryan first highlights that Lea and Naya were both INCREDIBLY young when they started Glee — 18 and 19! We can’t imagine that kind of pressure.
“I feel like in the case of that show [Glee],” Murphy explained, “that show was just a shitstorm of difficulty, largely because, what do you do when you’re 18-years-old or 19-years-old and you wake up one day and you’re world famous?”
Seriously. We don’t know.
“I think a lot of that was informed by their youth and being involved in a phenomenon. And I know for a fact that they [Lea and Naya] admired each other’s work, ‘cause I directed them both in scenes.”
We’re glad they had a mutual respect for one another.
More importantly, though, Murphy mentioned that Lea and Naya were definitely not the only ones fighting behind the scenes.
"There were many boys on our show that didn't get along. And you never hear about that. You never hear about that in our culture."
It makes us sad that Lea and Naya’s dislike of one another was covered relentlessly by the news while their male co-stars had disagreements and those were glossed over, if mentioned at all.
Naya herself said last year that she didn’t necessarily hate Lea, but rather they just had an oil-and-water type dynamic.
In her memoir, Sorry, Not Sorry, Naya writes:
“One of the Glee writers once said that Lea and I were like two sides of the same battery and that about sums us up. We are both strong willed and competitive — not just with each other but with everyone — and that’s not a good mixture. As the show progressed, though, that friendship started to break down.”
We’re glad that Ryan is drawing some attention to this double standard. We hope Lea and Naya have moved on from this seemingly turbulent chapter of their lives.
