Glee Almost Axed By Creator After Cory Monteith’s Death: What Saved It?

Glee co-creator Ryan Murphy revealed that he thought about just pulling the plug on the beloved Fox show after star Cory Monteith’s shocking death earlier this month. But it was Lea Michele who managed to change his mind.

Murphy told E! Online that he was stuck between delaying the show and cancelling it altogether.

“But the thing that we ultimately found was that our cast and crew wanted to be together, they wanted to go back to work, they wanted to sort of be in a place where they could all remember and discuss Cory sooner than later,” he said.

Willing to concede to the desires of his cast and crew, Murphy agreed to continue production on the next season, but there was one person whose blessing he needed to carry on: Lea Michele, Cory Monteith’s on-and-off-screen girlfriend.

Murphy said Michele “felt that the best thing for the cast and crew was to be together and to get back to work and be together every day and talk about our memories of him.”

Murphy also presented Michele with the option to be written off the show early, if that’s what she wanted.

“I would’ve, out of respect to her as a person, said ‘OK,’ but that’s not how Lea operates; that’s not how she feels,” he said. “Nothing has been done and will be done in terms of any of the material without Lea blessing it and making sure it’s OK with her — and she has been.”

Fox has pushed back Glee’s Season 5 premiere to September 26. The first two episodes will be a Beatles tribute, which was planned. The third episode will then likely deal with Monteith’s death and we’ll learn what the creators decided to do with Finn Hudson.

Do you think that Glee should be cancelled, or are you happy that they’ve all chosen to keep going?