An old saying argues that “from death comes life.” It apparently applies to rumors as well.
In the process of killing a rumor that she was leaving “Glee,” Naya Rivera, perhaps unintentionally, gave life to a new one about her standing with fellow cast member Lea Michele.
According to TVLine’s Matt Mitovich, Rivera told reporters at Tuesday’s “Glee 100” celebration that she was returning to set this Thursday. The news instantly silenced widespread rumors that she was permanently exiting the series.
That speculation, which began when The Hollywood Reporter omitted Rivera’s name from a feature on “Glee”‘s permanent shift to New York, reached a boiling point when Michele made the same omission.
Asked who would be at the center of the show’s “New New York” setting, Michele said, “it’s me and Chris [Colfer] and Darren [Criss] and Chord [Overstreet] and Kevin [McHale],” in an interview with E!
Lea’s failure to mention Naya Rivera, who has been appearing as a regular on the New York side of “Glee,” seemed to offer confirmation that she was either leaving permanently or at least taking an extended hiatus.
Downplaying that notion, Rivera blamed the rumor on the human tendency to exaggerate.
“People just take things, little things, and blow them up. But like I said, I’m reporting for duty Thursday at noon,” said the actress behind Santana.
That would have been enough to put the issue to bed. But in attempting to justify her absence from Michele’s remark, Rivera offered more bait for the rumor-starved.
“I guess Lea was doing interviews and had omitted me from the New York cast list, but I’m sure that was just a Freudian slip on her part, or maybe it wasn’t,” explained Rivera.
For Michele’s comment to be a “Freudian slip” rather than a mere oversight, it would need to reflect an unconscious, repressed desire. In this case, the most relevant such desire would be that Naya not, in fact, participate in upcoming episodes of “Glee.”
That conclusion, however, hinges on the notion that Rivera truly intended to label Michele’s omission a “Freudian slip.” If she mistakenly understood the term as a synonym for oversight, she was not injecting any drama or malice into her comment.
Of course, insofar as she also noted that “maybe it wasn’t” a Freudian slip, it seems Rivera at least knows that not all verbal slips are Freudian.