Idina Menzel says Being Cast as Lea Michele's Mom wasn't Good for her Ego

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Idina Menzel: Playing Lea Michele’s "Glee" Mom "Wasn’t Great for the Ego"
by Ryan Schwartz
August 13, 2023


Idina Menzel didn’t always love the idea of playing Lea Michele’s TV mom.

In a new interview recounting her time on "Glee", the Tony Award winner reveals that she was conflicted when she got the call to play Shelby.

“You’re worried you’re not going to work again, and then people hire you to be someone’s mother when you probably should be their older sister,” Menzel tells Stellar Magazine (via The New York Post). “It just wasn’t great for the ego.”




At the time, a 39-year-old Menzel had just given birth to her first child, and here she was being cast as mom to a 24-year-old Michele. Menzel went on to appear in 12 episodes across "Glee‘s" first four seasons.

“I had my son Walker, and then three months later, I got the call [to be on Glee] and so I said ‘yes,'” she recalls. The new mom was still breastfeeding, and she “couldn’t fit” into any of her costumes.

“I sucked it up and sucked myself into my clothes,” she says, adding that she was “excited to work with [series co-creator] Ryan Murphy and be a part of that hit show.

https://tvline.com/news/glee-idina-m...by-1235027494/