Samantha Marie Ware has shared more details about the “abuse” she copped at the hands of Lea Michele on the set of Glee, explaining why she opened up about her experience.
“I knew from day one when I attempted to introduce myself. There was nothing gradual about it. As soon as she decided that she didn’t like me, it was very evident,” Ware told Variety. “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.”
She went on to explain that Lea threatened her job in front of a group at one point.
“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. 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,” she explained. “She 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.”
She added that she refused to walk to the center of stage when Michele said, “You need to come here right now,” because she was already humiliated.
“I said ‘no,’ and that’s when she decided to threaten my job, and said she would call Ryan Murphy in to come and fire me,” Ware claimed. “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.”
Michele as Rachel Berry on Glee
The actress noted that she “tried to speak up” for herself, but was shut down by Lea. “She 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 also claimed that her situation “didn’t seem like that big of a deal” to others on set. “I guess since it was such a common thing,” she explained. “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.”
She added that she is hopeful the tweet she sent will open a conversation for 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,” she told Variety. “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.”
The magazine also reports that Michele attempted to get in touch with Ware after her tweet, but Ware would not give her personal contact info. On June 3, Ware’s representative received an apology letter from Michele, the same day the former Scream Queens actress posted a lengthy public apology.
