Ryan Murphy admits Glee should've 'probably not come back' after Cory Monteith's death

Glee creator Ryan Murphy is looking back on the show with the benefit of hindsight.

Appearing on And That's What You REALLY Missed, the podcast hosted by Glee veterans Jenna Ushkowitz and Kevin McHale, Murphy spoke about how the series handled the death of lead actor Cory Monteith in 2013.

"If I had to do it again, we would've stopped for a very long time and probably not come back," Murphy told Ushkowitz and McHale.

If Murphy found himself in a similar situation now, "I would be like, 'that's the end' ... Because you can't really recover from something like that," he added. "It wasn't, like, a normal death where someone is sick, and you can see them. It happened so quickly with no warning."

Monteith, who played music-loving football jock Finn Hudson on Glee, died from a combination of drug and alcohol toxicity in July 2013 at the age of 31. A month later, the show, which had been airing on FOX since 2009, filmed a tribute episode titled "The Quarterback." Glee would continue on with its fifth season and end with season 6 in 2015.

Ushkowitz played Tina Cohen-Chang and McHale played Artie Abrams on the series. Speaking to the tribute episode, they explained the difficulties of turning real-life tragedy into entertainment.

"It just felt like an impossible corner we were all put in," according to Ushkowitz. "There's no right or wrong."

McHale shared that he walked out of his scenes on set because the experience was so difficult, even with grief counselors on set. "We're in a scene talking about a character. Obviously we're talking about our real friend," he said. "Then there's a camera on you. When those things happen, you don't know when you're going to lose it and not lose it and break down."

"It's an episode I was able to watch once, and I never looked at it again," Murphy commented.

The anniversary of Monteith's death each year brings out tributes from Glee alum. This year, which marked nine years since the tragedy, Lea Michele, who dated Monteith, shared a photo of them to Instagram with a red heart.

While on her An Evening with Lea Michele: Life in Music tour in Washington, D.C., this past July, Michele said on stage that she hasn't watched the Glee tribute episode, in which she sang a rendition of Bob Dylan's "Make You Feel My Love."

"It's the only one I have not seen because I think if I don't watch it, it just kind of feels like Finn is still there," she said.

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