Former Glee star Amber Riley is spilling some throwback tea. The singer/actress was a guest on Showtime’s Ziwe and reflected on her time with former castmate Lea Michele.
Ziwe asked Riley to elaborate on the rumors of Michele’s racist behavior on set. She started her line of questioning by bringing up a quote from an Instagram Live that Riley did in 2020. In the live, Riley claimed she “didn’t think that Michele was racist.”
“Speaking of getting down in the muck, you said that one of your famous co-workers wasn’t racist. Did you mean that she was?” Ziwe asked.
The 36-year-old “shrieked in Black professionalism” and pulled an Uno-worthy skip-reverse of the question with a classy response: “I don’t know which co-worker you’re talking about. I’ve had so many.”
The host took the chance to remind her and played the clip of Riley’s past conversation.
Not the one to give up, Ziwe continued to nudge Riley for some dirt. “Would you say that your famous co-worker doesn’t see race and is, in fact, rude to all of her coworkers?”
“I would say she says she doesn’t see race, but as we discussed earlier, everyone does,” Riley replied.
As mentioned before, this isn’t the first time Michele’s racist antics have been a topic of conversation.
In 2020, fellow Glee star Samantha Ware tweeted about her experience working with Michele. As a new cast member introduced in Season Six, Ware was excited to join, but said Michele made her time on set “a living hell.”
Michele sent out a tweet sharing her feelings about George Floyd and included the Black Lives Matter hashtag. Sensing the insincerity, Ware jumped at the chance to reply, according to People.
“Remember when you made my first [television] gig a living hell?!?! Cause I’ll never forget. I believe you told everyone that if [you] had the opportunity, you would ‘s**t in my wig!’ amongst other traumatic microaggressions that made me question a career in Hollywood.”
According to Variety, the fallout from that tweet created a domino effect of Black actors coming forward to share their experiences.
Actor Dabier Snell claimed one time, while guest starring on the Fox show, he attempted to sit at a table with her, and she stated he “didn’t belong there.”
In the 2020 interview with journalist Danielle Young, Riley was asked if she had any negative experiences with her longtime cast member. The multitalented actress responded, saying, “I’m not going to say that Lea Michele is racist. That’s not what I’m saying. That was the assumption because of what’s going on right now in the world and it happened toward a Black person. I’m not going to say that she’s racist.”
Although Riley didn’t point direct fingers at Michele, she did allude to the fact that where there is smoke, there’s usually a fire.
“But at the same time, in my inbox there are a lot of Black actors and actresses telling me their stories and were letting me know they have dealt with the same things being on set, being terrorized by the white girls that are the leads of the show. We were even told we were expendable; the colored girls, the Black girls are expendable. I’m talking about the culture of Hollywood right now and how they treat Black characters, Black men, and Black women. I’m talking about the culture.”
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