Matthew Morrison has revealed he wanted to quit Glee before his co-star Cory Monteith died.
During an appearance on the And That's What You REALLY Missed podcast, Morrison revealed that he was over playing glee club teacher Will Schuester during season five and asked to leave.
"I actually was trying to get off the show," Morrison told his former co-stars Kevin McHale and Jenna Ushkowitz. "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.
"No disrespect to the show. 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."
However, after Monteith passed away in July 2013 aged 31, the producers of the musical series decided Morrison couldn't leave.
"Cory passed, and then they said they couldn't do it," he shared. "Because you can't have the two main guys on the show (leave). So yeah, it was an interesting time.
"Obviously I understood, I was like, 'Yeah, I get it.' You know, trying to reconcile my own wants and selfish needs with the grief of losing an amazing friend, you know, there's a lot of just mixed emotions. But I'm a professional, I showed up, I did my job. And there was a good pay increase, so that worked, too."
Morrison, who ultimately stayed with the show until its sixth and final season, explained that he wasn't satisfied with his character's decreasing prominence over the course of the series.
"I think I took it personally, like I was bad, and that's why my storyline kinda went," he said. "But then I look at the demographic of what the show ended up being, you know, it's like, they don't wanna see Mr. Schuester, they wanna see all the kids. So that made sense to me."
During an appearance on the And That's What You REALLY Missed podcast, Morrison revealed that he was over playing glee club teacher Will Schuester during season five and asked to leave.
"I actually was trying to get off the show," Morrison told his former co-stars Kevin McHale and Jenna Ushkowitz. "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.
"No disrespect to the show. 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."
However, after Monteith passed away in July 2013 aged 31, the producers of the musical series decided Morrison couldn't leave.
"Cory passed, and then they said they couldn't do it," he shared. "Because you can't have the two main guys on the show (leave). So yeah, it was an interesting time.
"Obviously I understood, I was like, 'Yeah, I get it.' You know, trying to reconcile my own wants and selfish needs with the grief of losing an amazing friend, you know, there's a lot of just mixed emotions. But I'm a professional, I showed up, I did my job. And there was a good pay increase, so that worked, too."
Morrison, who ultimately stayed with the show until its sixth and final season, explained that he wasn't satisfied with his character's decreasing prominence over the course of the series.
"I think I took it personally, like I was bad, and that's why my storyline kinda went," he said. "But then I look at the demographic of what the show ended up being, you know, it's like, they don't wanna see Mr. Schuester, they wanna see all the kids. So that made sense to me."