Cory Monteith’s death hit the Glee fandom hard six and a half years ago, and rewatching the series continues to be a very emotional experience. Lea Michele — who dated the actor until his untimely passing in July 2013 — feels the same. And on Thursday (January 16), she opened up about one particular scene that still hits her hard.
The deep, rather intimate conversation went down on the debut episode of Kevin McHale and Jenna Ushkowitz’s Glee recap podcast, Showmance. Michele was their first guest, and together, they looked back on the hit show’s pilot episode fondly.
“We were just, like, so happy,” Michele said of their early days on the series together, before Glee ever became the pop culture phenomenon that we know it as today. “We were really having the time of our lives,” she added.
It was McHale, though, who brought up a specific scene from the premiere episode that his character, Artie, shared with Monteith’s character, Finn. In it, Finn rescued Artie from a port-a-potty, and off camera, both actors knew that the moment was one they’d cherish forever.
“He and are like: ‘This is insane, isn’t it? We are going to remember this for forever. This is special.’ It was just the two of us,” McHale recalled. “I’m like, ‘Yeah, this is really wild.’”
Interestingly enough, that scene continues to make Michele emotional as well. “The moments that made me so emotional were not anything that ever has made me emotional before from the show,” she said, “and one of them was when he took you out of that port-a-potty.”
Honestly, there are several scenes from the show that would make us teary-eyed to look back on (including but not limited to “The Quarterback” tribute episode in Season 5), but Michele says the port-a-potty scene showed off who Finn truly was. “Him taking you out of that bathroom, and you see Finn’s heart,” she said. “It’s really profound and very emotional.”