Lea Michele Reads Aloud On Camera To Debunk Persistent Rumor That She’s Illiterate

A decade after rumors of her illiteracy became a trending topic on social media, Lea Michele is proving haters wrong by reading on camera.

The “Glee” alum, 38, has been at the center of a long-running conspiracy theory that she is unable to read, and has had co-stars and others read her scripts out loud so she can memorize her lines.

During an appearance on Thursday’s episode of the Therapuss with Jake Shane podcast, Michele revealed she first heard about the rumor from Ryan Murphy.

“Ryan Murphy called me, and he was like, ‘Have you heard this rumor?’ And I was like, ‘No, what’s going on?’ And the fact that we’re here all these years later,” she began, before grabbing note cards from Shane.

“Give me the notes. I’m reading that. Jonathan [Groff] is not here to read this for me,” she joked, ready to put the rumors to rest.

While reading a fan-submitted question from a note card, Michele joked, “What does this word say?” She then went on to read several of the note cards on camera.

Shane asked whether she was ever bothered by the rumors.

“It really depends on the day,” the Broadway star said. “Sometimes I think it’s crazy that people care enough about me that they would make up something. That someone has so little to do in their life and their day that they would waste it on me is hilarious to me.”

But she said there are still times that the rumor makes her “so frustrated.”

“I’m one of the only women in my whole family to get accepted to college,” she said. “My mother and my mother’s whole family was extremely poor, from the Bronx, not very well educated and my parents moved me from the Bronx to New Jersey to get a good education and to thrive and I did. And my parents and my family are so proud of that. It really was so important for my grandmother to see me, and for someone to minimize that, it’s so sad and so frustrating. But yeah, it’s wild.” 

Even people close to Michele get asked by fans whether it’s true that she can’t read, she revealed.

“Jonathan [Goff] did a podcast and someone was like, ‘Can Lea read?’ And his response to me was so funny,” she said. “He was like, ‘Do you really think she can’t? What the f does that say about you?'”