“It turned me into a monster,” said the Glee star of using steroids, which he had prescribed while being “sick as a dog.”
Glee star Kevin McHale revealed his co-stars held an intervention for him after he began using steroids to overcome an illness.
While speaking on his podcast And That’s What You Really Missed with cohost and former costar Jenna Ushkowitz, the actor shared how a few members of the cast spotted some warning signs with his behavior and confronted him in 2010.
“You had an intervention with me. Do you remember this?” McHale, 35, asked during the new episode. “We had just started filming the Super Bowl episode at this time. I think we were filming two episodes at the same time [and] in the middle of it, flying to England. I was sick as a dog on all kinds of medicine including prednisone.”
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“It turned me into a monster,” revealed McHale, who also added that it did “give him the courage” to “fight” for his part on the “Thriller/Heads Will Roll” mashup from the Season 2 episode football-centric episode.
McHale spoke about how, while on the plane to London, he was having dinner with co-stars Cory Monteith, Naya Rivera and Ushkowitz, when the latter two spoke to him about his steroid use.
“You were all like, ‘So, hey, why are you taking these steroids?’ I’m like, ‘Well, because I’m sick, I’m supposed to take them,” he said to Ushkowitz on the podcast. “You were like … ‘I think you should stop taking them.’ And I was like, ‘Why?!'”
He then added that his costars told him, “You’re not sleeping. You’re acting crazy. You need to stop taking them.” McHale recalled that he “hadn’t slept in days” at the time and admitted he was “losing my mind.”
Though Ushkowitz said the medication was “needed, necessary, prescribed,” McHale acknowledged he was happy they intervened. “It was a hard lesson to learn,” he added.
Rivera died in 2020 from drowning, while Monteith died of an accidental drug overdose in 2013, while the show was still on the air. Despite all the tragedy surrounding the show, both McHale and Ushkowitz have said in the past that they hope to use their podcast to shine a light on the many positive moments they experienced during their time on the Fox series.
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