Dianna Agron Pays Sweet Tribute to ‘Glee’ Costar Cory Monteith 12 Years After His Death

Though Dianna Agron doesn’t have the best memory about what happened on Glee, she remembers everything about her time with Cory Monteith on and off the small screen. Now the actress is reflecting on their time together in a sweet tribute 12 years after Monteith’s death.

“He was a teddy bear. And I mean that in a way of just his kindness and groundedness in himself was so perfect,” Agron gushed on the Thursday, August 14, episode of Kevin McHale and Jenna Ushkowitz‘s And That’s What You REALLY Missed podcast. “He was this tall, big brotherly presence, in all of our lives, and he was a few years older than us. And he just felt so safe and so equally excited about what he was getting to experience with his character. And his character had a leadership position in the show as well.”

Noting that Monteith did not have “an ungenerous bone in his body,” Agron recalled one time her late costar extended his kindness to her brother. “[Cory] was having people swim in his backyard, and my brother had come down to San Francisco. And he said, ‘Oh, you’re squinting a lot. Do you not have a pair of sunglasses or something like that?’ He was like, ‘Oh, no. I don’t,'” she shared. “And he was like, you know what? Come with me.'”

According to Agron, Monteith let her brother pick any pair of sunglasses from his collection that he wanted. “[My brother] was like, ‘Oh, no. Okay, well I’ll give them back to you.’ And he’s like, ‘No, I want you to take a pair that you want to take home. And now, you have a pair of sunglasses,'” she said. “That’s who he was always.”

Jordin Althaus/©Fox/courtesy Everett Collection

Sharing the memory gave Agron “goosebumps.” She went on to state, “It’s hard to think of our loved ones from the show not being with us anymore because they feel so present in my heart, body, mind, soul, all of it. And I think that the tenderness that I feel and the memories that I have and who, you know, both Cory and Naya [Rivera] and Mark [Salling] were as people, as cast members, as our friends and family, that’s just so vivid. And that will never dissipate for me, ever. And I think there’s beauty in that.”

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Agron portrayed Quinn Fabray on all six seasons of Glee, which ran on Fox from 2009 to 2015. Monteith led the series as football player-turned-singer Finn Hudson up until his death at the age of 31 in July 2013. (Salling later died at the age of 35 in 2018, followed by Rivera at the age of 33 in 2020.)

On the podcast, Agron said she sometimes feels “bad” for not having the best memory of what happened on the series. “I rewatched the finale, because I know you guys are getting to the end, because I didn’t remember most of it,” she told McHale and Ushkowitz. “D: “I’m not even in most of it, but that’s not why I don’t remember it.”

Despite having “fuzzy details” about the show, Agron said she’s “so pleased” that none of those details apply to her memories of her late costars.

“Beautifully said. That’s exactly right,” McHale stated. “I think we’re all very fortunate. Those memories are just stamped in there.”