“Glee”'s 'Frenemies' was an 'intentional' reference to Lea Michele and Naya Rivera's rumored feud, star says

The rumored feud between Lea Michele and Naya Rivera may have snuck its way into Glee canon.

While revisiting a drama-filled episode of the musical series for their Glee rewatch podcast, stars Kevin McHale and Jenna Ushkowitz recalled the influence that the swirling rumors had on a certain season 5 storyline. The episode in question, Frenemies, sees Rachel (Michele) and Santana (Rivera) viciously feuding over a Broadway gig and eventually rehashing the tense history they share from not getting along in high school. The episode originally aired in February 2014 around the same time that reports surfaced of a supposed feud between the actresses.

"I think the self-referential stuff that we've always done is perfect in this episode," McHale told his And That's What You REALLY Missed cohost. "Because I don't see how it was not intentional that they're going at it in this episode in such a specific way when there were, like, rumors out in the world that they didn't get along."

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He also speculated that his former costars enjoyed that meta element of the episode.

"You know they would have loved that s----," he said. "Naya and Lea were probably like, 'Yeah, let's do this.'"

Rivera, who died in a drowning accident in California's Lake Piru in July 2020, previously addressed the rumors — and hinted at the metatextual element herself — in her 2016 memoir, Sorry Not Sorry: Dreams, Mistakes and Growing Up.

"One of the Glee writers once said that Lea and I were like two sides of the same battery and that about sums us up. We are both strong-willed and competitive — not just with each other but with everyone — and that’s not a good mixture,” she wrote. She added that their friendship began to break down as she became less of a background character, and began to share the spotlight with Michele.

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That reality mirrors the in-show feud between the characters, whose friendship explodes when Santana lands a part in Rachel's Broadway show

"I think Rachel — erm, I mean Lea — didn’t like sharing the spotlight," Rivera wrote.

Referencing the rumors on the podcast, McHale observed, "All those things were always blown out of proportion and not correct."

Related: Heather Morris remembers late Glee costar Naya Rivera: 'I can't shake the feeling you never left'

But, he noted, that made the "Frenemies" episode all the more exciting: "Watching it was also, like, fan service in a way," he said. "Like, 'Oh, you think they hate each other? Let's give it to you.' And it works because they're also playing into it. It's like they're in on the gag of it all.”

Rivera would later deny that there was much of a feud between her and Michele, telling Watch What Happens Live host Andy Cohen in 2019,  “I don’t think there was, like, any beef." But other Glee stars have since shared negative memories of their time sharing the screen with Michele.

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Samantha Ware, who joined the show for its final season, accused Michele of making her life on set "a living hell" when she, among other things, allegedly threatened to s--- in Ware's wig. Since then, the issue of Michele's bullying tactics and alleged racism on set have been addressed and hinted at by more of her former costars. Heather Morris, who played cheerleader Brittany S. Pierce, called Michele "very unpleasant to work with," and Ware later criticized Michele's casting in Funny Girl, writing, "Silence is complicity."

For her part, Michele said in 2023 that she has since done many "personal reach-outs" to try and make amends. "The conversations that I've had behind the scenes with some people were incredibly healing and very eye-opening for me," she shared.

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