After years of speculation, Chris Colfer is finally answering the question on everyone’s mind: Can Lea Michele read?
The popular conspiracy theory that Michele can’t read had a resurgence when her former Glee costar entertained a question about it while speaking at the University of California, Berkeley.
When asked by an audience member to confirm the long-standing rumor, Colfer quipped, “Well, as a literacy advocate, it’s never too late."
Michele’s literacy skills may be in question, but clearly, Colfer has no problem reading, and the library is open.
@theberkeleyforum Chris Colfer answers if Lea Michele is illiterate #glee #ucberkeley #fyp #berkeley
“It’s so funny… I’m dyslexic. I can’t read for sh*t and the TikToks are never mean to me,” Colfer joked after the audience laughed at his original response.
The 35-year-old actor played out gay glee club member Kurt Hummel in the hit Ryan Murphy show, opposite Michele, who starred as quintessential diva theater kid Rachel Berry.
“But no, [Michele] was very literate, she was reading all the time,” he continued.
The funny rumors about Michele being illiterate started back in 2017 and spread like wildfire after the hosts of the One More Thing podcast joked that her inability to read or write explained why Naya Rivera's 2016 memoir, Sorry Not Sorry, claimed that Michele refused to improvise during Glee.
Colfer isn't the only one of her costars to get questioned about this online conspiracy theory. Michele's Scream Queens costar Emma Roberts said, “I mean, we’ve not been in a book club together,” when asked about it in 2023.
The rumor has picked up so much steam over the years that even Michele herself has commented on it.
“I went to ‘Glee’ every single day; I knew my lines every single day,” she told the New York Times in 2022. “And then there’s a rumor online that I can’t read or write? It’s sad. It really is. I think often if I were a man, a lot of this wouldn’t be the case.”
The joke gained new life when she was making her Broadway debut in Funny Girl, and people online started compiling more “evidence” of her illiteracy. To hit back in a funny way, Michele posted a TikTok captioned, “calling Jonathan [Groff] to read me the comments on my first TikTok.”
People in the comments of Colfer’s TikTok loved his comedic response to the question about Michele’s reading abilities. One person wrote, “dyslexic but he still read her to filth,” while someone else commented, “He said you know what…VIOLENCE.”
Another person said, “I love how much he hates her, someone asked him if he was going to see her in funny girl and he said 'no thanks I can be traumatized from home.’”
And there were endless jokes from people who still think the famous actress can’t read her own scripts, ’She was reading all the time’ picture books dont count!”
