Matthew Morrison Says He Was “Trying to Get Off” ‘Glee’ Before Cory Monteith Died

Matthew Morrison has revealed that he was planning to exit Glee before Cory Monteith’s death.

The actor, who played teacher Will Schuester on the hit series for six seasons, recently shared on the And That’s What You REALLY Missed podcast that he wasn’t very happy with the show and where his character was going at the time.

More from The Hollywood Reporter

• Brad Falchuk Finally Goes Solo

• 'Glee' Castmembers Team Up to Finish Previously Unreleased Naya Rivera Song for Charity

• Michael Lerner, Actor in 'Barton Fink,' 'Harlem Nights' and 'Eight Men Out,' Dies at 81

“I actually was trying to get off the show,” he said. “In season 5, I asked to be off the show, ’cause I was just like, I’m no longer being used in the way I wanted to.”

Morrison admitted that he wanted to look at other opportunities and projects, especially following his success with starring on Glee.

“No disrespect to the show,” the American Horror Story actor said. “We are at a high, I was like, ‘Maybe if I get off the show, I could go do something else, go do a movie,’ and they agreed to let me off the show.”

However, plans changed when his co-star Monteith, who played Finn Hudson, tragically died in 2013 at 31 years old.

“Cory passed, and then they said they couldn’t do it,” Morrison recalled the producers telling him. “Because you can’t have the two main guys on the show [leave]. So yeah, it was an interesting time.”

But the actor said he completely understood where the producers were coming from when they told him he had to stay on the show. He added that he was also navigating his own feelings and emotions at the time following Monteith’s death.

“I was like, ‘Yeah, I get it,’” Morrison said. “You know, trying to reconcile my own wants and selfish needs with the grief of losing an amazing friend, you know, there’s a lot of just mixed emotions. But I’m a professional, I showed up, I did my job. And there was a good pay increase, so that worked too.”

Glee, which followed a group of students who joined a glee club to escape the harsh realities of high school, aired from 2009 to 2015.

Best of The Hollywood Reporter

• 'Star Wars': 16 Animated Characters Who Made the Leap to Live-Action

• Power Showrunners: Hollywood’s 50-ish Most Influential Writer-Producers of 2023

• The Cast of 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer,' Then and Now