Glee star Jane Lynch says leaving Funny Girl early has ‘nothing to do’ with Lea Michele’s casting

Jane Lynch has clarified that her early exit from the Broadway show Funny Girl has “nothing to do” with her former Glee co-star Lea Michele’s casting.

Lynch’s last performance as Mrs Brice in the show will be on Sunday 14 August – three weeks earlier than she was supposed to finish up.

The news of her early departure comes after Michele was cast to replace Beanie Feldstein in the lead role of Fanny Brice. Michele’s first performance will be in early September.

In a new interview with Playbill, Lynch said: “I have a vacation August 14th, and then I had just like five shows after that, and it’s a six-hour flight, so I thought, ‘Let’s end it now.’ It has nothing to do with not wanting to see Lea.”

She added: “I text with Lea. She and I are fine. I’m thrilled for her. I love working with [current Fanny] Julie [Benko]. I loved working with Beanie. There’s no drama here. None.”

Michele faced criticism in 2020 after she shared a tweet dedicated to George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter Movement. In response to the actor’s post, one of her former Glee co-stars, Samantha Ware, called Michele out for making her “first television gig a living hell”.

According to the actor, Michele had told everyone she would “s*** in Ware’s wig” if she could, “among other traumatic microaggressions”.

Following that tweet, some of Michele’s other former co-workers spoke up. One claimed that she had previously “threatened to have people fired” and “was terrifying” at the age of 12.

Michele later wrote a statement on Instagram to apologise for her past behaviour, noting how she wanted to “keep working to better [herself] and take responsibility for [her] actions”.