Matthew Morrison revealed that he was planning on making his exit from Glee shortly before Cory Monteith died in 2013. Matthew, 45, explained that he had already asked to leave the show, but once Cory died, he knew that he had to stay in a new interview on the And That’s What You Really Missed podcast on Thursday, February 2015.
The Where It All Began singer opened up that he was “trying to get off the show” at the time to explore other opportunities. “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,” he said, via Entertainment Weekly. “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.”
Matthew said that when Cory died at 31 in July 2013, the people working on the show said that they couldn’t take him out of the series. “You can’t have the two main guys on the show [leave]. So yeah, it was an interesting time,” he said on the podcast. “Obviously I understood, I was like ‘yeah, I get it.'”
Navigating the loss of Cory, Matthew said that he had a lot of “mixed emotions” while he stayed on the show. He said that it was a matter of “trying to reconcile my own wants and selfish needs with the grief of losing an amazing friend.” Despite the conflicting emotions, the actor said that he was still dedicated to the work. “I’m a professional, I showed up, I did my job. And there was a good pay increase, so that worked too,” he said.
Cory’s death came after the fourth season of Glee ended, and the season 5 tribute to him “The Quarterback” aired in October 2013, three months after his death. The show continued for one more season and ended after six seasons in March 2015. There have been rumors that a Glee reboot might be in the works in early 2024.