Claims of “The Price of Glee” Encouraged Cast Member Cory Monteith – Rolling Stone

Ryan Murphy‘s Fun It was an inexplicable phenomenon in its early years. Mystery comic Music The series set in a high school glee club didn’t look like it was going to draw nearly 10 million viewers an episode, but the show was a massive hit for Fox from the start.

However, in the decade since its debut, Fun It was Noisy public image. The quality of the show fizzled quickly, trying to keep up with what was popular on the radio as well as what fans wanted from the series and its characters. On set, it was drama bubbling and hard to hide.

After that, there was a series of deaths – tragic, sudden and horrific – that would make people think that “Fun curse” exists. Cory Monteiththe previously unknown hero of the show who played the beautiful fullback Finn, was Found dead at the age of 31, between the show’s fourth and fifth seasons. Mark Salling, who played the less sweet quarterback, was accused of sexual battery and later Possession of child pornography. he will dies of suicide in 2018. Naya Riverawho stole the scenes of the arrogant cheerleader Santana, died from accidental drowning in Lake Piru in California while on a trip with her son.

The interest in deciphering what the hell was going on with the cast of this show has made the series more popular now than it was when it launched in 2015.

Enters The price of elationin three parts documentary from ID and Discover + Premieres January 16th. Unfortunately for Gleeks eager to know the truth about all the romance and fights that took place during the show’s heyday, this wasn’t the tea party longtime fans had always hoped for. Instead, it’s a true crime that focuses on the sudden deaths of Monteith, Rivera, and Salling. Trying to make sense of the inexplicable, docuseries seek and fail to find answers, instead passively blaming the show and its crew for those losses.

The price of elation It has a plot-driven approach to storytelling, largely due to the fact that the actual cast refused to participate and even denounced the docuseries upon its announcement. The series relies on the positions of the cast, backup dancers, various crew members, publicity, and even a supporting actor. big time rush To piece together the story, with many half-baked hardcore theories about what went wrong.

Instead of being a sensationalist sage of everything with behind-the-scenes gossip, the doc taps into both the news industry and the deaths of cast and crew behind the scenes. Although much of the information the speaking heads share is speculative, here’s some of what we learned from the participants in this series.

The cast’s work schedules were grueling.
Usually, the cast of a hit TV series gets a few months off between filming seasons regardless of the size of the show. Fun It wasn’t staged like a regular show: the cast’s versions of popular hits became their own while the show stimulated an insatiable fan base on the Internet. Once the first season wrapped, the cast was sent on Glee Live! Tour, which they embarked on in 21 cities worldwide the following year as well. For the first year and a half of the series’ production, the cast worked the brand on and off. Their workdays included hours of dancing and vocal rehearsals, as well as time in the booth recording songs with their numbers, and of course filming actual scenes.

All talk in the head The price of elation He takes the time to point out how difficult and isolating their schedules are. To add to the higher stakes, young and hot actors are becoming tabloids, paparazzi, and Stan’s bait. Filming in public has become a harrowing ordeal due to the appearance of hordes of fans and cameras. Monteith even had to move out of his Culver City apartment because of a stalker. Eventually, a gated tunnel was built in the studio lot to hook directly to the actors’ trailers for their set to keep them safe (and yes, some talking heads use that gated tunnel as a cheap metaphor for the actors’ loneliness).

A staff member allegedly encouraged Cory Monteith’s relapse.
Monteith has been open about his history of substance abuse as a child. He fell into the “bad crowd” and spent his teenage years getting deeper into drug and alcohol abuse before his mother and friends got involved. He was sober for several years before he was cast Fun, A great break. Although his friends, like roommate Justin Neal, noticed how much he hated fame, Monteith seemed to stick with sobriety until the show’s fourth season. He began appearing unprepared for shooting and then disappeared from most of the season, after being checked into a rehab facility. On July 13, 2013, he was found dead in a Vancouver hotel room, surrounded by empty champagne bottles and heroin in his system.

Speculation about Monteith the death in The price of elation It is handled poorly, and internalizes empty notions of how and who might be causing the break out instead of dealing with the fact that addiction is an ongoing disease that a person wrestles with throughout their life. One of the most shocking claims comes from Dugg Kirkpatrick, the hairstylist who led the hair department Fun. He continued to cut some of the cast members’ hair after he left the show and cut Monteith’s hair short before his death. According to Kirkpatrick, Monteith was drunk at his haircut and told the story of how he ended up drinking again. Kirkpatrick claims another cast member was at a party with Monteith and told him it was fine to drink if he wanted to. Because he did not witness the actual interaction, Kirkpatrick refused to say who Monteith claimed gave him permission, saying only that it was someone they liked.

Unfortunately, Kirkpatrick isn’t the only person in the doc pointing fingers. Several people in the doc spend a lot of time pointing out how weird and mismatched Monteith and his co-star are Lea Michelewho he was dating at the time of his death. In contrast, they scantily attempt to connect the true allegations of her bad behavior towards her colleagues and extras to Monteith’s sudden relapse.

There were many other deaths within Fun family.
The tragic and untimely deaths of Monteith and Rivera, as well as Salling’s suicide in the face of child pornography charges, were well covered by the media. The show was considered “damned” by many. Former crew members and standbys of the show also point out that there have been many other untimely deaths of people who worked on the show behind the scenes, and many blame the strict production schedule and studio pressure for some of these losses. Among the deaths during the show’s run: a car fire killed Mark Watson, who was the understudy for Matthew Morrison, and assistant director Jim Fuller suspected of heart failure at age 41. Production assistant Nancy Motts died by suicide, as did an unnamed installer its name.

In mentioning these losses, The price of elation A follow-up to a final episode focused on the deaths of Saling and Rivera, two completely different cases with no reason to tie them together.

Naya Rivera’s family is still searching for answers after her death.
The third and final episode of The price of elation It focuses on Rivera’s accidental drowning in 2020 while on a boating trip with her son. The episode also touches on Saling’s child pornography charges as well as Melissa Benoist’s revelation that she was a victim of domestic violence, which was later linked to co-star and ex-husband Blake Jenner (the pair joined Fun in Season 4, becoming a series regular in Season 5).

Rivera’s father George details his daughter’s acting career, volatile relationship with Salling, and later, her early death. The documentary series features a journalist on a pontoon like Rivera was last seen with an expert giving practical reasons why such a “strong swimmer” as Rivera could not lift herself back onto the boat. George hints at continuing to search for answers, though no one suggests bad play as the reason. Some of the theories suggested by investigators concerned her history of dizziness that worsened underwater as well as her frail physical condition after rescuing her son from the currents.