You Won't Believe How Grown-Up All The Stars Of ‘Glee’ Stars Look Now
The tv show Glee first aired in 2009 (crazy, right?). It's a musical comedy/drama that follows a ragtag group of high school students as they navigate sheet music and the drama of being teenagers, that first aired in 2009. Fast forward six seasons, 121 episodes and a whopping 728 musical performances (not to mention the literal dozens of Emmy nominations and six wins, the handful of Golden Globes, and even more chart-topping hits), and it's pretty safe to say that the show was a bonafide phenomenon. It's also pretty safe to say that part of what made the series so successful was its stars.
From the beginning, the cast so obviously gave it their all and loved what they were doing each episode—even when their character was getting tossed in the dumpsters behind McKinley High. With so much singing and dancing happening onscreen, you might assume that The New Directions were stacked with Broadway alums and showbiz kids who had been performing since they were born. There were some of those (including Lea Michele and Jenna Ushkowitz), but there were also plenty of cast members for whom Glee was their first major role (hi, Chris Colfer).
After watching them literally grow up on the show, plenty of fans are wondering what the cast is up to now. Did Lea follow in Rachel's footsteps and return to Broadway? Did Heather Morris go back to dancing with Beyonce? Did they all finally get to stop having slushies thrown in their faces? Read on to learn more about all the stars of Glee, then and now.
Rachel Berry, the self-appointed leader of the Glee club with big dreams, may have been the first starring role for Lea Michele, but she had been acting, singing and dancing professionally (including on Broadway) since she was a child. Her character's type A and sometimes *cough* self-absorbed *cough* personality wasn't always loved by both the other members of The New Directions or viewers of the show, but you have to admit, the girl's got talent. Rachel's ambitions eventually carried her all the way to Broadway as well, and the role gave Lea two Golden Globe nominations and one Emmy nod.
But her newfound fame wasn't always the easiest thing to deal with. In 2013, she opened up to Ellen Degeneres about how hard it was to properly mourn the death of her costar and boyfriend Cory Monteith while being hounded by paparazzi. "It's pretty intense," Lea said on The Ellen Show. "There are so many different emotions, and to kind of have people watching every step of the way..." She said she felt safe going back to work on the show during the time because the cast and crew were like her "family."
Lea has since remained busy in a way that would make Rachel proud. Her first studio album, Louder, was released in 2014, and her second, Places, was released in 2017. You could have also caught her in roles on TV and in movies, including teaming up with Ryan Murphy once again for Scream Queens.
In 2019, Lea married businessman Zandy Reich, and the two welcomed their first child in 2020. That same year, the actress's conduct on set came under fire after former costars came forward with allegations of passive-aggressive (and sometimes outright aggressive) and racist behavior, Variety reported at the time.
You could say that without Will Schuester, there would be no Glee. The Spanish teacher at William McKinley High School is the one responsible for reviving the school's glee club to not just its former glory, but way past it. Mr. Schue also became a sort-of father figure to the students of the group while dealing with his own relationship drama on the side, including his (now ex) wife faking a pregnancy and his feelings for his coworker Emma.
Like some of his costars, before joining the show, Matthew was best known for his roles on Broadway, and his performance in The Light in the Piazza earned him a Tony nomination.
After Glee, Matt released his own studio album before returning to Broadway as J.M. Barrie in the musical version of Finding Neverland. In 2019, he shimmed his way over to the U.K. where he was a dance captain for two seasons on the reality competition show The Greatest Dancer. He later teamed up with Ryan Murphy once again for the ninth season of American Horror Story, and most recently, Matt starred as the Grinch in Dr. Seuss' The Grinch Musical on NBC.
As the quarterback of the football team, Finn Hudson was The Man at William McKinley and started the show as half of the Finn-Quinn power couple. However, his increasing feelings for Rachel, and you know, the fact that his girlfriend cheated on him and got pregnant, led Finn and Rachel to later became the most talked-about Gleek couple.
Canadian actor Cory Monteith joined Glee as Finn Hudson after several minor roles in TV and film. Cory battled addiction his entire life, and after an intervention by his Glee cast members, he checked himself into rehab in 2013. But just a few months later, Cory died of an accidental overdose.
Following the tragedy, the show paid tribute to Cory during an episode on season five, and Glee creator Ryan Murphy told The Hollywood Reporter that they never really considered keeping the Finn character with another actor. Since then, many members of the cast have continued to celebrate Cory's life by wishing him happy birthday each year, and Lea Michele (his girlfriend at the time of his passing) has tattoos of both his character's name and his jersey number, according to Entertainment Weekly.
Kurt Hummel was one of the breakout characters from the show from its premiere. The fashionable gay student is routinely bullied for his sexuality, and at the time, was one of the only LGBTQ characters on network television. Chris won a Golden Globe for the role, which also landed him a spot on the Time 100.
Legend has it that Chris Colfer tried out for the part of Artie on the show, and while Ryan Murphy didn't think the young actor from Indianapolis was right for that part, he was so impressed with Chris that he created the character of Kurt for him, the LA Times reports. And fans loved him.
After Kurt's dreams came true on Glee, Chris funneled his creativity into writing and starring in his own film, Struck by Lightning, which debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2012.
But today, Chris is probably best known for his New York Times bestselling YA series, Land of Stories. There are six books in the series in all, and it was announced in 2017 that Chris is working on (and will direct) a film adaption of the series, per The Hollywood Reporter.
Every show has to have a villain (even one about a glee club in Ohio), but there are few who you love to hate as much as Sue Slyvester. For the majority of the series, Sue antagonized members of the glee club, particularly Mr. Schue, but she does have her moments when she proves she's not all bad, including when she votes for The New Directions to win Regionals in season one.
Jane Lynch was an established actress before donning Sue's #iconic tracksuits and had roles in Christopher Guest's mockumentaries Best In Show and A Mighty Wind as well as starring in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Two and a Half Men and Criminal Minds. Jane has five Emmys, two SAG Awards and a Golden Globe—and earned one Emmy and the Golden Globe for her work on Glee.
Jane has continued headlining shows and winning awards since the end of the show. The actress hosted six seasons of the NBC game show Hollywood Game Night (which won her two Emmys for Outstanding Host For a Reality or Reality-Competition Program) and memorably starred as comedian Sophie Lennon on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (which won her another Emmy).
These days, you can catch Jane as the host of the reboot of The Weakest Link on NBC.
Santana Lopez started on the show as a sidekick to head cheerleader Quinn Fabray and spy for Sue but became much more complex when she developed feelings for her best friend, Brittany. While she struggled with her sexual identity for a few seasons, by the end of the series, Santana was out and proud and happily married to Brittany. (#Brittana forever)
The role was a breakout one for Naya Rivera. The actress told Complex that she even kept her full-time nanny gig up until the third episode of season one just in case things didn't work out. However, Santana was quickly developed into a leading character.
Six months after the end of Glee, Naya gave birth to her son Josey and, understandably, took some time off from acting. However, she didn't stop working entirely; her book, Sorry Not Sorry: Dreams, Mistakes, And Growing Up, which Buzzfeed describes as "part coming-of-age story, part celebrity biography, part Hollywood exposé, and part self-help book," was published a year later. The outlet also reports that she first had the idea to write when she co-hosted six episodes of The View from 2014-2015. Naya returned to the screen in 2017 with a role in the YouTube Red series Step Up: High Water about a competitive performing arts school in Atlanta.
In July 2020, the 33-year-old's life was tragically cut short when she died in a drowning accident in Lake Piru in California. Following the news of her death, her friends and co-stars shared tributes to the actress and Glee creators Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan told the press they were "heartbroken" over the news, per CNN.
Amber Riley proved herself as a force to be reckoned with as Mercedes Jones. In season one, she takes on Rachel and scores a solo at Sectionals and eventually moves to California to study at UCLA and record her first album at an indie label like the talented songstress she is.
Before being cast as Mercedes Jones on Glee, Amber Riley tried her hand at getting famous the good old fashioned way, through reality television. The actress once tried out for American Idol but was rejected by producers, according to Entertainment Weekly, meaning she didn't even get to sing for the judges. (No word on whether Simon Cowell has any regrets about that.)
A few months after Glee wrapped, Amber was back on TV starring in NBC's live-action version of The Wiz as Addaperle, the Good Witch of the North. She then took her talents overseas and starred as Effie White in the U.K. debut of Dreamgirls on London's West End. “Working on the West End is now a dream realized, I just feel like this is going to be something special!” Amber said in a statement at the time, according to Entertainment Weekly.
Amber was most recently back in the recording studio, and she released an EP, RILEY, in October 2020.
During her time on the show, Quinn Fabray balanced being a cheerleader and a member of The New Directions as well as balancing relationships with Finn, Puck and Sam (and a one-night stand with Santana). She is one of the characters who graduates at the end of season three, and when she tried to return her Cheerios uniform, Sue tells her to keep it.
Dianna Agron was the last actor to be cast for the series, and Ryan Murphy told Rolling Stone that the role of Quinn Fabray, head cheerleader and judgemental queen bee who starts off the show with a couple of pretty big secrets, was initially meant to be even meaner but that plan changed when Dianna nabbed the role.
“When we cast Dianna as Quinn, she ruined the part for me,” Ryan said. “...she humanized it. She can cry at the drop of a hat. So now her character has a conscience, a soul and great vulnerability.”
After season three, Dianna made the occasional appearance on the show, including the final episode, but left to pursue other projects. She starred in the film adaptation of the YA series I Am Number Four, and she made her West End debut in McQueen, a play based on the life of designer Alexander McQueen.
Dianna returned to singing with a residency at Cafe Carlyle in New York City in 2019, performing songs from the '60s and '70s. “You can tell that it is a space for music lovers. And there’s the intimacy of it,” she told Parade. “I love to be able to see every face in the room and craft a show that is unique to the space. It allows for the type of music that I wanted to perform.”
Noah Puckerman would gladly take on the title of the bad boy of the glee club. During his time at McKinley, Puck threw more than his fair share of slushies and students into the dumpster. While he initially joined The New Directions to be closer to Quinn when she reveals she's pregnant with his child, he eventually realizes that he enjoys singing and also eventually, his on-again, off-again relationship with Quinn becomes on-again. After Finn's death, Puck decided to join the Air Force in his honor.
Before joining the show, Mark Salling had a couple of minor roles and dabbled in music, and he released an album, Pipe Dreams, in 2010.
His time on Glee remains the role for which Mark Salling is most well-known. Two years after the series ended, Mark was arrested on suspicion of possessing child pornography and was later charged, according to The Hollywood Reporter. He pleaded guilty, and a month he was to be sentenced, Mark took his own life, People reported at the time.
Tina Cohen-Chang started out in The New Directions pretty shy, but like other members, her time in the club helped her become more confident. While a group of McKinley students heads off to New York after graduation, Tina enrolls at Brown University.
Some of Jenna Ushkowitz's first costars were muppets and monsters (she did three seasons of Sesame Street) before making her Broadway debut in the 1996 performance of The King and I and was performing in Spring Awakening when Ryan Murphy and his team were casting for Glee.
Jenna has taken on a range of projects since her time on Glee. She was in the Hollywood Bowl production of Hair and Waitress on Broadway and won a Tony for producing the revival of Once on This Island. Jenna also helped to found Kindred, a foundation focused on helping adoptees and their families (Jenna herself was adopted from South Korea). As if that wasn't enough, she also co-founded a digital media company, At Will Media, that provides in-house production for podcasts, including her podcast with costar Kevin McHale.
Loveable Artie Abrams isn't one to let being in a wheelchair stop him from pursuing his dreams, including joining the McKinley High football team. After graduation, he moves to New York to study at the Brooklyn Film Academy but still finds the time to help Brittany and Santana plan their wedding in season six.
Kevin McHale had his own small taste of fame before joining Glee. He and his band NLT (Not Like Them) opened for the Pussycat Dolls in 2007, according to the Times Union, plus, he grew up taking singing lessons from the same teacher as some other famous names, he told D Magazine (like Ashlee Simpson, Ryan Cabrera and future Glee guest star Demi Lovato).
After Glee, Kevin continued to work in TV and film, including hosting British comedy panel show, Virtually Famous, and starring in the independent film Boychoir. He and former co-star Jenna Ushkowitz also host a podcast together, Showmance, that gives listeners a BTS-look at the making of an episode of Glee each week.
The best one-liners on the show have to go to Brittany S. Pierce, hands down. For example, "My cat's been reading my diary." Or take, "This room looks like that one on the spaceship where I got probed." But despite sometimes coming off as ditzy and having to repeat her senior year due to a 0.0 GPA (hey, things happen), she receives early admission to MIT. But when the university changes her too much, it's nothing that a visit back to Ohio and an emotional duet with her then ex-girlfriend and future wife Santana can't fix.
Heather Morris's dance career started long before she joined the cast of Glee, and in fact, it was her dancing skills that landed her the part. Way back in 2006, Heather tried out for So You Think You Can Dance but was cut before making it to the live shows of the season. However, she landed an even more impressive opportunity as a back-up dancer for Beyonce on her world tour, and she was first brought on to Glee to teach the cast the "Single Ladies" dance, Refinery 29 reports. Producers were still looking for one more cheerleader for the show, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Heather continued to focus on dancing after the series ended. She was a celebrity contestant on season 24 of Dancing With The Stars, which caused some drama since she was already, you know, a professional dancer. But either way, Heather ended up only making it to the sixth week.
Brittany definitely secured the title of Best Dancer on the girls side, but for the boys, that honor would go to Mike Chang, even though it is revealed that he hasn't told his parents that he loves to dance. Things do work out for Mike, though, and he enrolls at Joffrey Ballet Academy of Dance after graduation.
As you can probably guess, Glee wasn't Harry Shum Jr's first dancing gig. Before joining the show, he was in Step Up 2 and Step Up 3D and was actually one of those dancing silhouettes in the classic iPod commercials, Entertainment Weekly reports.
Harry has continued to act and dance. including landing a leading role on Freeform's Shadowhunters and a guest-starring role on Awkwafina is Nora from Queens. You'll also be able to catch him in the upcoming Crazy Rich Asians sequels, according to Vox.
Do you think when Darren Criss helped write and starred in A Very Potter musical at the University of Michigan (later available on YouTube) that he knew it would lead to a role on a hit TV show?
Darren joined the show in season two as Blaine Anderson, a member of The Dalton Academy Warblers who eventually transfers to McKinley High (which also, conveniently, is where his future boyfriend and eventual husband, Kurt, goes to school). After graduation, he moves to NYC to attend NYADA alongside Kurt and Rachel.
In between filming for Glee, Darren appeared on Broadway in How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and as the title character in Hedwig and the Angry Inch.
In 2017, this time after Glee, he teamed up with Ryan Murphy again (sensing a theme here yet?) for American Crime Story's second season that focused on the death of Gianni Versace, a role that earned him an Emmy and a Golden Globe. You can also catch him in Ryan's series Hollywood, which was released on Netflix in 2020.
It doesn't take long after joining the group for Sam Evans to become the new heartthrob of The New Directions. He uses that star power to pursue a modeling career in New York, but after things didn't go quite as planned, he returned to McKinley to become the assistant coach of the football team and eventually becomes the director of The New Directions.
When Chord Overstreet joined the cast in season two, it was his first major role, and when it was announced that he was being downsized to an occasional guest star for season three, fans started a campaign using #DontCutTheChord, despite, as TVLine reports, Chord left the show in order to pursue his music career. He has since released an EP and a handful of singles.
As the McKinley guidance counselor, Emma Pillsbury had to deal with a lot—students sleeping with each other, students sleeping with substitute teachers and not to mention her own confusing feelings about her various coworkers/boyfriends. On top of that, she has intense hygiene habits spurred by her mysophobia (including cleaning grapes individually with a sanitizing wipe before she eats them).
Before Glee, Jayma Mays's credits include small parts on Six Feet Under, How I Met Your Mother and House. After, she starred as the main character on the two-season sitcom Trial and Error, and more recently, you could see her in the third Bill & Ted film as Bill's wife.
Becky Jackson may have seemed like a sweet cheerleader at first, but there's nothing like spending time as Sue Slyvester's partner in crime that will change that. Her ambition and sass eventually land her the role of co-captain of the Cheerios.
While on the show, Lauren Potter split her time between McKinley High and the White House, serving on Barack Obama's President's Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities. She was an ambassador for the 2015 Special Olympics World Games in LA and she has continued to work with the organization, including on its campaign advocating for ending the use of discriminatory language.
Coach Beiste came to McKinley High in season two to whip the football team into shape. But despite being tough on his players, he does have a sensitive side and leans on his coworkers when he leaves his abusive marriage. In the sixth season, he comes out as transgender and begins the process of transitioning.
If you're interested in challenging Dot-Marie Jones to an arm-wrestling contest, don't. The actress not only was on the medieval fighting competition show, Knights and Warriors, she's also won 15—count 'em, 15!—world arm wrestling championships, E! reports. She then went on to appear in numerous TV shows, and she famously landed her part on the show by asking co-producer Brad Falchuk if she could be on it when she ran into him at Whole Foods.
You could argue that the unsung (no pun intended) hero of Glee was Principal Figgins, who always had to serve as the referee between Sue and Mr. Schue. (And yes, according to a sixth season episode, his actual first name is "Principal.") He's eventually bested by Sue, and when she takes over his position, she appoints him the new janitor.
Iqbal first came to the US in the '80s to study at the University of Oklahoma and become a construction manager, KGOU reports, but he fell in love with acting after seeing a friend in a play at the university. Before Glee, Iqbal had a handful of recurring TV roles, including on The George Carlin Show, Married... with Children, ER and the Ryan Murphy OG Nip/Tuck.
Since leaving his job as Principal Figgins, Iqbal has appeared in TV shows and movies, including Community, Transformers: Dark of the Moon and Green Book. He also spends his time cheering on his beloved OU Sooners on Twitter.
Ryan Murphy was not a newcomer to TV when Glee premiered in 2009. He had previously created the WB series Popular and the FX series Nip/Tuck, but nothing in his career beforehand prepared him for the level of fame that he and the cast would skyrocket to. And no one more was surprised at how much the series took off than Ryan himself.
He told Entertainment Weekly that after he returned home from shooting Eat Pray Love in 2009, "I was like The Beatles. It was so crazy, like you could not go out with those kids.” Ryan earned his first Emmy for his work directing the pilot episode of the series.
These days, it's hard to find a hit TV show that Ryan Murphy didn't have a hand in. Since Glee, Ryan has gone on to create shows including (but not limited to) American Horror Story, American Crime Story, Feud: Bette and Joan, Pose, Scream Queens, The Politician and Ratched. He's won another five Emmys and been nominated a total of 32 times—along with his two Tony and two Grammy nominations.
In 2018, Ryan signed a deal with Netflix worth $300 million, which Time reported was the largest development deal in TV history. His latest release for the streaming service is The Prom, a film adaption of the Broadway musical that is already earning Oscar buzz, per Variety.
You Won't Believe How Grown-Up All The Stars Of ‘Glee’ Stars Look Now
The tv show Glee first aired in 2009 (crazy, right?). It's a musical comedy/drama that follows a ragtag group of high school students as they navigate sheet music and the drama of being teenagers, that first aired in 2009. Fast forward six seasons, 121 episodes and a whopping 728 musical performances (not to mention the literal dozens of Emmy nominations and six wins, the handful of Golden Globes, and even more chart-topping hits), and it's pretty safe to say that the show was a bonafide phenomenon. It's also pretty safe to say that part of what made the series so successful was its stars.
From the beginning, the cast so obviously gave it their all and loved what they were doing each episode—even when their character was getting tossed in the dumpsters behind McKinley High. With so much singing and dancing happening onscreen, you might assume that The New Directions were stacked with Broadway alums and showbiz kids who had been performing since they were born. There were some of those (including Lea Michele and Jenna Ushkowitz), but there were also plenty of cast members for whom Glee was their first major role (hi, Chris Colfer).
After watching them literally grow up on the show, plenty of fans are wondering what the cast is up to now. Did Lea follow in Rachel's footsteps and return to Broadway? Did Heather Morris go back to dancing with Beyonce? Did they all finally get to stop having slushies thrown in their faces? Read on to learn more about all the stars of Glee, then and now.
Omg, Artie is so cute.
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