With the "Glee" tribute to Cory Monteith and his character Finn Hudson airing tomorrow, girlfriend Lea Michele is speaking out about her loss in her first interview since his death.
"I feel like, for me personally, I've lost two people: Cory and Finn," she tells TV Week Australia. "We had a beautiful memorial for Cory in the auditorium and some of the cast members sang and people spoke about him. It only felt right that we would do the same thing for Finn, so I felt it was very therapeutic."
The trailer for Thursday's episode alone had us in tears, but Lea makes it sound like everyone has been very professional on set, leaning on each other as they go.
"Everyone is asking: 'Is it hard to do this? Is it hard to be back at work?'," she says. "But the truth is it's no harder at work than it is in life so we might as well all be together as a family supporting each other to get through this together."
Speaking specifically about her relationship with Monteith, who passed away from a drug overdose in July, Michele adds "There was no greater man than Cory, so for the time we spent together I consider myself very lucky."
"I really woke up every single day feeling like I was being in some sort of spell or something, that I was lucky enough to have him in my life. I feel like what happened with Cory (the cause of his death) was this big,” she says, holding her fingers together to reflect a miniscule amount, "in the scheme of who he was and his life."
It sounds like Lea is in a good place right now, but you can hear the pain in her voice in her performance from Thursday's "The Quarterback" episode of the show -- where she sings a very emotional cover of "Make You Feel My Love."
Will you be tuning in for the "Glee" tribute Thursday night?
