Deaths, drugs and abuse in 'Glee', the cursed series that marked an entire generation

“In May 2009, 10 young actors made their television debut on

In 2020, they were all famous, and three of them were dead."

With this start as morbid as it is irresistible,

is presented , the documentary that Discovery+ will premiere in the United States on January 15.

Throughout three chapters, he intends to unravel "the dark side of the series on and off the screen."

The rejection of the protagonists has been resounding.

And their anger with those who try to associate them with the documentary has been huge.

Chad Ovestreet, the blond Sam Evans, described it as “shit”.

Kevin McHale (Artie), who he shares with his partner on

Jenna Ushkowitz (Tina) a podcast about the ins and outs of the series, has also been very critical of the documentary on her social networks: "It's trash."

Since the end of

in 2015, there have been multiple disagreements between its protagonists.

Lea Michele (Rachel Berry) has been accused of being a racist and bully by several of her classmates.

His rivalry with Naya Rivera (Santana) was so exacerbated that the creator of the musical, Ryan Murphy, joked that he had been inspired by

, the series that chronicles the ruthless confrontation between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford during the filming of

(1962)

Canceled and reinstated with the speed at which things happen in the new millennium, today Michele triumphs on Broadway with

, a role she knows well—her interpretation of her from

it was one of the climaxes of the series.

Despite the fact that knives have always flown over fiction, the motto that everyone brandishes against the documentary is “what happens in

stays in

”.

“It doesn't matter what happened on that

.

At the end of the day we were one family, one big dysfunctional family, and that means loyalty," Becca Tobin said on the

.

The actress, who played the evil cheerleader Kitty Wilde and joined the series in season four, also spoke about the "desperate" insistence with which she had been contacted to be part of the documentary.

Ryan Murphy, creator of 'Glee' with the Emmy won for 'The People v.

OJ Simpson: American Crime Story" for Best Miniseries. Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP

Meanwhile, those responsible try to justify the need for a project that has behind it the architects of

, centered on the family of the now ousted Armie Hammer.

Jason Sarlanis, Discovery's President of Crime Content and Investigation and Streaming, issued a statement about the project: "While celebrating the indelible mark the show has left on pop culture and its unprecedented success,

takes a look to the intense pressure that comes with being catapulted to fame and sheds new light on the terrible tragedies that befell his

cast and crew .”

The series about the members of the choir of the William McKinley Institute arrived in 2009 on the Fox grid without too many expectations.

The creator, Ryan Murphy, was not yet the producer of series as successful as

(2011),

or

(2022).

He had directed

(2003)

a disturbing fiction about plastic surgeons, and

(1999)

a teen comedy that went almost unnoticed in Spain and served as a test bed for

.

It took little time to become a phenomenon.

He battled with

for the lead in Tuesday night audiences, handily topping ten million weekly viewers between the two.

He won the Golden Globe in its first season and originated multiple successful specials and tours that led to million-dollar sales of all the albums in the series.

His famous

(combination of two songs) and his careful choreography were small weekly events.

The songs covered in each chapter dominated the charts.

Many artists scrambled to squeeze their songs into a series capable of turning Journey's 1981 theme

, their unofficial anthem, into number one.

It was the fashion series and everyone wanted to touch his mantle to soak up the glory.

Britney Spears, Olivia Newton-John, Whoopi Goldberg, Sarah Jessica Parker, Gwyneth Paltrow (who met her current husband, Brad Falchuk, one of the series' producers) and Broadway royalty from Idina Menzel passed through his set. to Patty Lupone.

Throughout its six seasons ,

was revealed as a version of the successful

(2006) from Disney that would have substituted vitriol for sugar.

His humor was sometimes so stark that seen with today's eyes it can be uncomfortable.

In the first chapter, the choir teacher blackmails Finn by placing marijuana in his locker, a few chapters later his wife provides pseudoephedrine to the students so that his performances are more energetic.

Their characters were archetypes: the dim-

, the perfectionist, the gay who adores musicals, or the black woman with a strong personality, but always one step behind the white protagonist.

"I'm Beyoncé, not Kelly Rowland," protested Mercedes Jones in the pilot.

She embraced parody so uninhibitedly that the character played by Harry Shum, Jr., now the lead on Grey's

, was often referred to simply as "the other Asian."

The expletives used to come from the loudmouth of Sue Sylvester, a kind of Mauricio Colmenero in a tracksuit, who was played by Jane Lynch, a fixture on the lists of nominations during the first years of the series.

The truth is that it opened the door to a group of characters that are little or not at all common on television.

Today premieres such as the Spanish film

or

gay comedy ,

but more than a decade ago

It was already showing Kurt and Blaine's teenage romance and the relationship, including a wedding, between cheerleaders Brittany and Santana in prime time.

It came to include gender-fluid characters, played by gender-fluid actors, and starkly exposed the effects of homophobia and bullying.

Also the problem of teenage pregnancies, shootings in institutes and addictions.

All of this on Fox, a conservative chain that reaches the entire country.

Despite everything, he was not spared from controversy.

The choice of Kevin McHale, an actor with no mobility problems, to play a character who used a wheelchair was highly criticized.

“What were we thinking?

I can't play that role again, ”the actor acknowledged on his podcast.

The supposed curse of Glee

There is a scar that divides Glee: the death of Cory Monteith.

His character, Finn Hudson, was the mainstay of the series;

a sensitive

with a prodigious voice who radiated charisma.

He starred on and off screen in a romance with actress Lea Michele that rounded off the story.

His present was perfect and his future in Hollywood seemed assured.

On July 13, 2013, his body was found at the Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel in Vancouver.

His cause of death was a combination of heroin and alcohol, he was 31 years old.

Three months later, the series paid tribute to him in the devastating episode

.

“If I had to do it again, we would have stopped production for much longer and we might not have come back,” Ryan Murphy confessed years later.

A few days ago he again affected it on the McHale and Ushkowitz

: "You can't recover from something like that."

Finn had played a central role at the beginning of the series, and he was going to do so in the finale as well.

Murphy explained that at the end of her dream of her, Rachel was triumphantly returning to a school where Finn was a teacher.

"I'm coming home," she told him.

.

It could not be.

Cory Monteith, Finn Hudson in 'Glee', died in 2013 from a combination of heroin and alcohol, he was 31 years old.

A

second tragedy of even more unpredictable dimensions awaited

In 2015, the Los Angeles police arrested Mark Salling, Puck, Finn's best friend, a badass with a sensitive side and a Mohawk hairstyle.

On his personal computer they found more than 50,000 images of child pornography.

He pleaded guilty to the charges and was sentenced to between four and seven years in prison.

He never went to jail, he hanged himself in a forest near his house.

Five years later, the tragedy again.

In 2020, Naya Rivera, who played the cheerleader Santana López, suffered an accident while sailing on Lake Pinu with her four-year-old son.

She remained missing for days and when they finally found her body, all the speculation that arose around her death was discarded: she had drowned after saving the life of her son.

Again, the environment of the series was devastated.

The dramatic events did not stop soaking up the information that was coming from the series.

Becca's boyfriend, Tobin, was found dead in a Philadelphia hotel after suffering a heart attack, presumably caused by stress.

He was 35 years old.

In 2019, Melissa Benoist published a heartbreaking video in which she denounced the mistreatment to which her husband Blake Jenner had subjected her.

Both had come to

in the fourth season as a generational replacement for Rachel and Finn, and just like them they had fallen in love during filming.

Jenner counterattacked by assuming her guilt, but blaming the protagonist of

(2015)

of having damaged his career because of his unhealthy jealousy.

The latest scandal came from the staff room.

After just a week as a judge on the dance show

Matthew Morrison, Will Schuester's Spanish teacher, was abruptly fired after one of the contestants accused him of sending her "inappropriate" messages.

The buzz about the pernicious effects of the series resurfaced.

Ryan Murphy has attributed many of the controversies that have arisen to the inexperience of the cast: "How are you going to behave at 18 or 19 years old if you become a world star overnight?"

In his time at the

, he put on the table a possible return of the series: "Should we restart it somehow?"

Ushkowitz was delighted: "If Ryan does it and the right people are involved, she would be up for it."

She was not so positive about the documentary that opens in January: "I have nothing good to say about it, so I'm not going to say anything at all."

What happened on

should stay on

.

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