'Glee's Samantha Marie Ware Accused Lea Michele Of "Traumatic Microaggressions"

Here's what you missed on the Glee set. On Monday, June 1, Samantha Marie Ware accused Lea Michele of racial microagressions on Glee and making the set of the long-running Fox series a "living hell." Ware's Twitter post came shortly after Michele wrote a post of her own condemning the death of George Floyd at the hands of police officers, which the mother-to-be shared on Monday night, along with the hashtag "#BlackLivesMatter."

In response, Ware — who played Jane Hayward in Season 6 of Glee — wrote on Twitter, "Remember when you made my first television gig a living hell?!?! Cause I’ll never forget." The actor and singer also claimed that Michele "told everyone that if you had the opportunity you would 'sh*t in my wig!' amongst other traumatic microaggressions that made me question a career in Hollywood." (Bustle has reached out to Michele for comment but did not receive an immediate response.)

Ware's co-star, Alex Newell, appeared to confirm — or at the very least, support — her account in a series of posts on his own Twitter account by responding with several GIFs cheering Ware on. "I’m gonna say this one time," Newell later wrote, seemingly addressing the reaction to Ware's tweets. "When my friends goes through something traumatic I also go through it... that’s what friendship is... and if you can’t understand that then you’re part of the problem... and that’s on PERIODT! And I mean that for both sides of this coin!"

Newell wasn't the only one of Michele's former co-stars who reacted to Ware's post; Yvette Nicole Brown, who starred opposite Michele on the short-lived comedy The Mayor, wrote that she "felt every single one of those capital letters" that Newell used. Meanwhile, Amber Riley, who played Mercedes Jones on Glee for all six seasons, shared several GIF reactions, including one of herself drinking a mug of tea.

Kevin McHale — aka Glee's Artie Abrams — also waded into the drama by responding to a tweet that listed everything "problematic" about the show's cast. After Twitter user @gimmethecloot wrote that Chord Overstreet is "low-key but maybe high-key a Trump supporter," McHale simply wrote that the accusations about Overstreet were "false." In response, several Twitter users assumed that McHale was confirming that the rest of the list — including the accusations against Michele — was true, though the actor soon clarified his statement. "Don't be putting words in my mouth," he wrote, after a fan asked if "everything else is legit."

Over the course of its seven-year run, there were frequent rumors about fighting between members of the Glee cast. In April 2014, TMZ reported that Michele and Naya Rivera were fighting on the show's set, with representatives for both actors claiming that the other was thrown off the set for causing trouble. Rivera confirmed that there was a rivalry between her and Michele in her 2016 memoir, Sorry Not Sorry, which escalated to the point where they didn't speak at all while filming Season 6.

"If I'd complained about anyone or anything, she'd assumed I was b*tching about her. Soon, she started to ignore me, and eventually it got to the point where she didn't say a word to me for all of Season 6," Rivera wrote. "Lea and I definitely weren't the best of friends ... but the rumors of our 'feud' were blown out of proportion." Thus far, Rivera has not publicly commented on Ware's accusations.