‘Scream Queens’ Update: Co-Stars Can’t Look At Lea Michele!

Scream Queens won’t be debuting on our television screens for another two months, but Lea Michele’s performance as Hester (aka Neckbrace) is already a huge hit, as least as far as Michele’s Scream Queens co-stars are concerned. For those who haven’t been following the Scream Queens leaks and teasers, Hester is a too-eager-to-please pledge at the Kappa Kappa Tau sorority and a thorn in the side of sorority queen Chanel Oberlin (Emma Roberts), who curses poor Hester with the “Neckbrace” nickname.

Lea’s character is somewhat soft spoken, particularly in the first half of the two-hour series premiere of Scream Queens, yet Michele’s co-stars insist that Lea’s mere presence in the scenes steals the show.

Emma Roberts, who has been bonding on and off set with her Scream Queens co-star, gushes over Michele’s ability to bring out the giggles in her through her performances as Hester.

“She makes me laugh all day!”

“Literally, there was a scene where she doesn’t have any dialogue and she was just standing right here and I would have to look over her head,” Roberts explained. “I was like, ‘I’m sorry, I’m not being rude, but if I look at you I will laugh so hard.’ I couldn’t even take it, it was just so funny!”

“She has also done this singular motion which is this excited thing like this,” added Jamie Lee Curtis, mimicking the motions of Lea Michele’s character.

“I swear in my house now I walk around and my husband will say, ‘We’re going out to dinner’ and I do it too now,” Ms. Curtis added.

Ryan Murphy has made it clear from the very beginning that Scream Queens would be an odd hybrid of comedy and horror, so the ability of Lea Michele to bring out robust laughter in her co-stars may be the first inkling that the Scream Queens concept will be a big hit.

Will Scream Queens be a bigger hit than Murphy’s other horror anthology, American Horror Story? Emma Roberts seems to think so, and, having starred on both series, Ms. Roberts may be in a position to judge quite accurately.

“We’re so excited,” exclaimed Roberts. “We have so much fun making the show. Every time I get a script and I read it, I’m just so happy to be a part of this. And I can’t believe that I’m a part of this because if I wasn’t, I would be watching this show each week obsessed but so mad that I wasn’t on it.”

The two-hour premiere of Scream Queens is set to air on Tuesday, September 22, on Fox.

[Featured image: Lea Michele courtesy of Fox/Scream Queens]