Kevin McHale and Jenna Ushkowitz Recall Filming Cory Monteith’s Final “Glee” Episode, Remember It as a 'Weird Day'

The 'And That's What You Really Missed' podcast hosts said that "the vibes weren't great" while filming yet another version of "Don't Stop Believin'" for the 2013 episode

Glee alumni Kevin McHale and Jenna Ushkowitz say the vibes on set were “off” during the filming of Cory Monteith’s final episode of the hit musical series.

On the most recent episode of their rewatch podcast And That’s What You Really Missed, the host revisited the 19th episode of the show’s fourth season, “Sweet Dreams,” which marked Monteith’s final appearance on Glee. His character, Finn Hudson, did not appear in the remaining three episodes of the season, which aired between April 25 and May 9, 2013, and the 31-year-old actor died from a “mixed drug toxicity” of heroin and alcohol the following July.

“Sweet Dreams,” which originally aired on April 18, 2013, also features the original six members of the show’s glee club — including McHale, Ushkowitz and Monteith alongside Lea Michele, Chris Colfer and Amber Riley — once again reprising their performance of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” from the pilot episode. That scene in particular brought back a lot of memories for Ushkowitz, 38, and McHale, 36.

“The vibes weren't great,” McHale admitted. “It was just a weird day. Nothing, like, necessarily happened that was bad. Like, the vibes were just strange.”

“To be completely honest, there were inklings of things being talked about that were rumors at the time, about what was happening with Cory,” Ushkowitz recalled. “It wasn't the way he was acting by any means. There was no kind of, like — we weren't being informed in any way. There was just talk.”

McHale remembered Monteith, who had struggled with substance abuse from an early age, being “distant” on set that day.

“Obviously, it's easy with hindsight to, I don't know, maybe assign more meaning to these things. It could also just have been, like, we were all tired that day,” he said. “It's not weird that you wouldn't all hang out in between takes and things. Like, you're surrounded by people. You're not really paying attention to that.”

The actor also said he remembered the cast “being insane” on set and “making Cory laugh.”

According to McHale and Ushkowitz, it wasn’t just Monteith who seemed off that day. As the hosts explained, by Glee’s fourth season, the cast had already performed “Don’t Stop Believin’” several times on the show and every night during their Glee Live! In Concert! tour. The show’s original cast had also been largely divided into separate storylines, with several members off at college or pursuing their dreams of Broadway stardom in New York City.

“Everyone was sort of very separate and it felt strange,” McHale explained. “We hadn't worked with Lea in a in a long time.”

Ushkowitz added that the scene, which saw Michele’s character imagining the show’s original glee club performing “Don’t Stop Believin’” with her during an audition for Funny Girl, as strange to film. "It was, like, being time-warped, like, teleported, but not," she said.

Related: Chris Colfer Remembers Challenges of Making Glee: 'Like Creating a New Broadway Show Every Single Week'

“I don't think anybody was super excited to be doing ‘Don't Stop’ again,” McHale said.

“We also hadn't seen Amber. We hadn't seen Chris. We hadn't seen Lea,” Ushkowitz recalled. “Lea and Cory were dating at the time. So, separated also was this couple that was kind of doing their thing. And Kevin and I had been — you and I were in a different world with new people living this show.”

“And so when you interact with people that like, everyone's been doing their own thing and you show up to do this old thing you're like, ‘This isn't — this doesn't feel great,’ ” McHale said. “We were fully clocking in and clocking out that day. Like, we were all a bit removed, I think, is what it felt like.”

McHale added that the vibes on set “were off, hard."

“It's crazy that we both have the same feeling, but can't necessarily pinpoint what was going on,” he told Ushkowitz.

“I honestly feel like there was a lot, obviously, happening behind the scenes, a lot of drama, a lot of things that were in the works,” she replied.

"Serious things," McHale agreed. "I think things happening with Cory that we didn't really …"

"We weren't privy to," Ushkowitz agreed.

Related: Jenna Ushkowitz Says Glee's Infamous VapoRub Scene 'Would Never Fly These Days, and Shouldn’t'

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The And That’s What You Really Missed hosts previously marked the 10th anniversary of Monteith’s tragic death in July 2023, explaining how they use humor to cope.

"We make a lot of dark jokes about it because if you don’t, you’re just gonna cry," McHale said, while admitting that the cast’s jokes don’t necessarily play well with fans. "I realized it only works amongst us experienced in this very peculiar specific thing."

"We’ve all worked through it in therapy," Ushkowitz noted.

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