Lea Michele, an actress known most for her role of Rachel Berry on the hit TV show “Glee”, has recently been exposed for her abusive attitude in the workplace. This accusation was sent via tweet from Samantha Ware in June of 2020 after Michele tweeted in support of the Black Lives Matter movement (Hegedus, 2020). According to the New York Post, Ware explained, “when you tweet ‘Black lives matter,’ that would mean you have an understanding of what that hashtag means, but it’s clear that [she] doesn’t.” (Hegedus, 2020) Ware shared many stories of Michele being mean and abusive towards her during her time spent on Glee. Specifically, she explained that she received a variety of stare-downs, looks, and comments under her breath directed at her (Hegedus, 2020).
Many of Michele’s previous coworkers agreed with Wade’s statements of her being abusive in the workplace, including Dabier, Amber Riley, and Jeante Godluck (Sarkisian, 2020). The increasing amounts of support behind this accusation proved that Michele was hard to work with and created a negative reputation for the actress. This eventually caused HelloFresh, a company that had been partnering with Michele, to sever its ties with her (Sarkisian, 2020). To combat the negativity surrounding her actions, Michele decided to release an apology statement on her Instagram a week after the tweets first came out (Sarkisian, 2020). Her statement explained that she was trying to show her support through her initial tweet about Black Lives Matter and she now understands how her behavior towards “fellow cast members was perceived by them.” (Sarkisian, 2020).
This apology, although having good aspects, didn’t really work for Michele. There is one main reason why the apology didn’t go well. To start, one of the main parts of crisis management is responsibility. When referring to this, it means that you are taking full responsibility for the event or action. When Michele made her apology, she didn’t really take responsibility for how she treated people in the past. She started well when expressing that she was learning from her mistakes, but stumbled when saying how her behavior was “perceived.” This wording didn’t make it seem like Michele took responsibility for her previous actions at all.
Instead, this resulted in backlash from fans and stars who had called her out. Specifically, there was a comment on her apology post by Gerard Canonico, which fought back saying, “Maybe actually apologize instead of placing the blame on how others ‘perceive’ you.” (Sarkisian, 2020). By not taking the blame, she made anyone who had been treated wrongly feel like she thought she didn’t do anything wrong and this made her look even worse.
Although this was what most took away from the apology, she also did do something right when she released it. To be more specific, her timeliness in responding was pretty fast. Michele actually released her statement within a week of the first tweet, which was a smart move. This follows one of the main parts of crisis management, rapid response. By responding in a timely manner, you are able to show the public eye that you genuinely care about what occurred. If she had taken longer to respond, it would have made her look like she didn’t care at all about how her previous coworkers had felt. So, responding this quick is something that helped her case, although it couldn’t overshadow the fact that she didn’t take full responsibility for her actions.
Overall, Lea Michele made the right move in releasing a statement quickly, but the wording of her “apology” didn’t portray that she was apologetic about her previous actions. This resulted in a failed attempt at managing her situation. If she could do this apology over again, my advice to her would be to take full responsibility for the situation in order to make people feel as though she genuinely felt sorry.
Sources:
Hegedus, E. (2020, June 11). ‘Glee’ star Lea Michele was a mean girl ‘from Day One,’ says Samantha Ware. https://nypost.com/2020/06/11/glee-star-lea-michele-was-a-mean-girl-from-day-one-says-samantha-ware/.
Sarkisian, J. (2020, June 12). More and more actors are accusing ‘Glee’ star Lea Michele of being ‘unpleasant,’ ‘a nightmare,’ and guilty of ‘racist microaggressions’. Insider. https://www.insider.com/lea-michele-glee-costars-actors-accusations-of-unpleasant-racial-microagression-2020-6.
Raigan Novotny 