Why starring opposite Lea Michele in Glee wasn’t good for my ego
She won’t “Let it go.”
Idina Menzel opens up about playing Lea Michele’s mother on hit Fox series Glee, saying it’s “not good for the ego.”
The Broadway diva, now 52, was just 38 when she was cast to play Shelby Corcoran – the mother of Michelle’s character Rachel Berry.
Menzel is just 15 years older than Michele and had just given birth to her own baby when she made her 2010 Glee debut, so playing the mother of a teenage character was unnerving.
“You know, you’re scared you won’t be able to work again, and then people hire you to be a mom to someone when you’re probably supposed to be their older sister,” she said Stellar Magazine.
“It just wasn’t good for the ego. But I soaked it up and soaked into my clothes and was excited to work with it Samantha Ibrahim Ryan Murphy and be a part of this hit show.”
Menzel gave birth to their son Walker in September 2009.
“I had my son Walker and three months later I got the call [to be on Glee] and so I said ‘yes,'” she recalls, saying she feared acting roles would dry up once she was a mother.
Menzel noted that she was still breastfeeding at the time of filming and “didn’t fit into any of the costumes.”
Though the casting hit her ego hard, the star said she continued to enjoy her role and continued to guest star into 2013.
Menzel was married to Walker’s father Tay Diggs from 2003 to 2013.
In 2017 she married Aaron Lohr and was hoping for a second child.
The Frozen star detailed her emotional IVF journey with Lohr in a candid interview People Last year he said, “Maybe before I meet, [Lohr] I didn’t think he wanted to have kids and then he sees what a good father he can be, so I wanted that for him.”
“I didn’t think I wanted a baby, but Aaron was the greatest man to my son [Walker].”
Menzel added that the unsuccessful attempt to have a child with Lohr strengthened their marriage.
“[Lohr] It really feels loved that I even tried to do this to my body. I think after all that you’re so exhausted that by the end you’re like, “I don’t want to do this anymore, and that’s just the way it is.” “It wasn’t supposed to be, and you’re determined to be,” she admitted openly to.
“At this point he sees Walker as his own child anyway,” she shared. “I think we’re content and happy with what we have.”
Menzel added that trying to have a child strengthened her relationship with her husband. You’re so exhausted from all of this that you finally realize, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore, and that was it.’ ‘It wasn’t meant to be,’ and you’re determined to do it.”
