Scream Queens star Lea Michele formally proved her literacy this week, laying a long-held (and mostly facetious) fan conspiracy theory to rest.
According to Jezebel, the saga started when a chapter from the memoir of Michele’s former Glee co-star, Naya Rivera, revealed that the actress doesn’t love improvising on set. The passage alleged that Michele “became upset when comedian Tim Conway tried to get the cast to improvise a scene instead of performing it as written.” There are plenty of reasons why Michele might have been nervous to improvise—mainly that she isn’t a comedian—but podcast duo Jaye Hunt and Robert Ackerman read the book and came up with a theory of their own. In a Facebook stream back in 2017, the pair posited that Michele might have every scene memorized beforehand because director Ryan Murphy reads them aloud for her. The hosts presented Instagram images of Michele “writing single words” and “holding books recommended to her by BFF Emma Roberts,” building a body of evidence that the actress could be slowly learning how to read and write as an adult. While it would certainly explain Michele’s reluctance to switch things up on-set, the evidence was circumstantial and lighthearted at best.
At the time, Michele was apparently happy to let the idea fizzle out on its own. But when a fan tweeted this week that Michele probably “laughing her head off” that it hasn’t lost steam, Michele closed the issue with a tweet.
“Loved READING this tweet and wanted to WRITE you back,” she said.
https://twitter.com/LeaMichele/status/976915072730636288
Hunt and Ackerman quickly took to their podcast’s Instagram to pledge allegiance to Michele’s fandom and clarify that they were not trying to make light of literacy, a serious issue for many adults:
https://instagram.com/p/BgoGu5kh-GZ/?utm_source=ig_embed
So there you have it, folks. Lea Michele can read (and tweet).
