Matthew Morrison played McKinley High School teacher and glee club director Will Schuester for all six seasons of the beloved Fox show, but the Glee star apparently was planning on saying goodbye to Mr. Schue way earlier than fans might have realized.
The musical TV comedy—which started off strong in its first season with critical acclaim and Emmy wins for Sue Sylvester actress Jane Lynch and great guest star Neil Patrick Harris, but notably fell off in its later editions—was riddled with behind-the-scenes drama over the years, with creator-showrunner Ryan Murphy even admitting to infighting among the actors, not to mention the numerous tragedies the cast and crew had to weather over the years.
It's actually because of one of those tragedies that Morrison stayed on with the series longer than he initially intended, as he revealed during an interview with the And That’s What You REALLY Missed podcast, hosted by his former Glee co-stars Kevin McHale and Jenna Ushkowitz (who played Artie Abrams and Tina Cohen-Chang on the show, respectively). Morrison divulged:
I actually was trying to get off the show. In season 5, I asked to be off the show, just ‘cause like, I’m no longer being used in the way I wanted to. No disrespect to the show. We were 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. And then Cory passed, and then they said they couldn’t do it. Because you can’t have the two main guys on the show [leave].
Matthew is, of course, referring to the tragic passing of Glee actor Cory Monteith, who died from a drug overdose at the age of 31 in July 2013. Monteith portrayed Finn Hudson, the school's star quarterback with a secret musical streak, for four seasons of the show.
The series honored the star with a tribute episode, titled "The Quarterback," in season five, which also featured the death of his character. Lea Michele, who was Monteith's love interest both on screen and off after they went public with their relationship in early 2012 and remained together until his death a year and a half later, performed a heartbreaking rendition of Bob Dylan's "Make You Feel My Love" in the memorial episode.
Morrison discussed dealing with the grief of Monteith's passing both in the show and in life, and having to reconcile with his "own wants and selfish needs" at the same time:
So yeah, it was an interesting time. Obviously I understood, I was like ‘yeah, I get it.’ 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.
Of course, Cory Monteith's passing isn't the only tragedy in the cast of Glee. Actor Mark Salling, who played teen delinquent Noah "Puck" Puckerman, died by suicide in 2018 after he was charged with possession of child pornography, and Naya Rivera, the actress-singer behind fan favorite Glee cheerleader Santana Lopez, shockingly drowned in 2020 at 33 years old.
Though Morrison's Mr. Schue was initially meant to be one of the leading roles alongside Lea Michele's Rachel Berry, viewers became more invested in the younger members of the Glee cast, which the actor admitted he took "personally" at the time:
I think I took it personally, like I was bad, and that’s why my storyline kinda went. But then I look at the demographic of what the show ended up being, you know, it’s like, they don’t wanna see Mr. Schuester, they wanna see all the kids. So that made sense to me.
You can see Matthew Morrison play Will Schuester in all six seasons of Glee, available to stream with a Disney+ subscription or Hulu subscription.
