As racist institutions throughout the country face a just reckoning, Lea Michele got called out by basically everyone she's ever met for being the worst.
Samantha Marie Ware was the first to call out the former Glee star, and she has more to say. Lea was vicious to her from day one.
Speaking to Variety, Samantha Marie Ware is expanding upon her rotten experiences with disgraced Glee alum Lea Michele.
"I knew from day one when I attempted to introduce myself," she recalls, referring to Lea's animosity towards her.
"There was nothing gradual about it," Samantha characerizes the malice and aggression.
"As soon as she decided that she didn’t like me," she recalls, "it was very evident.”
“It was after I did my first performance," Samantha details, "that’s when it started."
She describes Lea's unprofessional and vicious behavior as "the silent treatment, the stare-downs, the looks."
Samantha continues her litany of descriptions of Lea with "the comments under her breath, the weird passive aggressiveness."
"It all built up," she explains.
Samantha shares that Lea thratened to have her fired -- issuing the threat in front of a crowd of extras, dancers, and castmates.
She admits that she did not at any point file an official report to the network or to the studio.
Why? She had never considered that it might be an option.
Many people are unaware of the options for filing complaints that are available to them in their field. That is often by design.
Despite recognizing how vile Lea's behavior was and how it was impacting her, she explains that she felt that she had to power through it.
"Lea’s actions were nothing new," Samantha acknowledges.
"So," she expresses, "I guess since it was such a common thing."
"My case didn’t seem like that big of a deal,” Samantha says.
“I remember the first day I actually spoke up," Samantha recalls.
"And unfortunately," she laments, "no one did anything."
Samantha characterizes the response: "They just shrugged it off, like ‘That’s her.’"
That may be so, but a person being always awful does not make them any better than someone who is only occassionally vile.
"No one was stopping these things," Samantha laments.
She emphasizes that this is something "which is an issue."
It was a serious problem "because the environment was helping perpetuate this abuse."
If a TV star can viciously berate her castmates and threaten to defecate in their wigs without being checked, the behavior will only escalate.
This came out amidst widespread and courageous protests, when Lea claimed to share the beliefs of those protesting.
"Remember when you made my first television gig a living hell?!?! Cause I’ll never forget,” Samantha wrote in a quote-tweet.
“I believe you told everyone that if you had the opportunity you would ‘s--t in my wig!’" she recalled.
Samantha said that this was "amongst other traumatic microaggressions that made me question a career in Hollywood."
Samantha was only the first of many to call out Lea. It seems that everyone had a bone to pick with her.
Yvette Nicole Brown, best known for starring on Community, who had the misfortune of working with Lea, also spoke up.
"I felt every one of those capital letters," she replied to Samantha's all-caps tweet.
And while Lea has been accused of singling out black actors for vicious cruelty, it appears that her alleged bigoted behavior is more ... inclusive.
Transgender model Plastic Martyr took to Instagram as all of this was unfolding.
She shared a story of using the restroom at the Emmy's at a time before she felt that she fully "passed."
This is when Lea Michele allegedly yelled "excuse me?!" repeatedly at her, berating her for using the women's restroom.
Trans women do not have to "pass" to go to live their lives. And it seems that there are other trans actresses who have horror stories about Lea.
For generations, people have excused a certain degree of vicious behavior from painters, actresses, and musicians.
But the reality is that "diva" attitudes, no matter who is wielding them, come from a place of entitlement -- not as a side effect of "creative genius."
Some may question whether Lea's antics were racist, since she also targeted white people with cruel barbs and unthinkable bullying.
But one needn't target black people exclusively to be racist. And, speaking for myself, when black people say that an actress was racist to them, I believe them.