Samantha Marie Ware Just Gave More Details About What Happened Between Her and Lea Michele

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.