So, All Your Favorite ‘Glee’ Stars Aren’t Being Fired After All

Becky Bain | July 25, 2011 10:30 am

A few weeks ago, Ryan Murphy revealed that Lea Michele, Chris Colfer and Cory Monteith’s characters would be graduating at the end of Glee Season 3 and would not be coming back. Though some fans hated this news, others thought it was the best thing to happen to the show (and the actors’ careers). But either the producers changed their minds or Murphy was just projecting, as Glee co-creator and exec producer Brad Falchuk told the crowd attending the Fox show’s San Diego Comic-Con panel that Lea, Chris and Cory will indeed return for the show’s fourth season, and beyond.

“Here’s the exact thing: [Rachel, Kurt and Finn] are seniors, so they’re graduating,” Falchuk explained. “But because they’re graduating doesn’t mean they’re leaving the show. If you have Lea Michele under contract, you don’t say, ‘We’re gonna let you go.'” He added, “A number of the original [cast members’ characters] are not graduating this year.”

“It was never our plan or our intention to let them go,” said Falchuk. “They are not done with the show after this season.”

One person who is dunzo is “trouty lips” Chord Overstreet, but by his own choice. “We did invite [Chord] back for a portion of the season,” the EP says, “To see if being a regular was a possibility. But he declined the offer, which we were really disappointed by.”

Added Falchuk, “We wanted him back because we like Chord personally and had some good stories planned for him and with Mercedes. He decided he would have opportunities elsewhere that he would like to pursue, and we can’t force him to work, so we wished him well.”

Basically, what we can gather from all of this is that the Glee producers really need to work on their communication skills with their cast. They had no idea they had been reportedly fired, and they also had no idea that they hadn’t Emmy nominee Colfer made a statement about hearing through Twitter that his character would be written off the show after the next season. You’d think that if wasn’t true, that he’d be able to shoot down that report.

In any case, keeping the older characters around in some capacity while introducing new members of New Directions sounds like the hour-long show is going to get pretty cramped with competing storylines. (Even more than it already is.)