Glee's Farewell to Finn hits US TV screens tonight so it's no surprise to hear that Lea Michele has been opening up about the episode and death of her boyfriend, Cory Monteith, for the first time since he passed away.

The American acress had remained largely out of the spotlight since Monteith died in July from an accidental overdose, but she's broke her silence to speak about the on-screen tribute to her character's long-time love.

"I feel like, for me personally, I've lost two people: Cory and [his Glee character] Finn", Michele told TV Week Australia. "We had a beautiful memorial for Cory in the auditorium and some of the cast members sang and spoke about him. It only felt right that we would do the same thing for Finn [on the show] so it was very therapeutic. I haven’t seen it yet, but we did it because it was something we all needed to do together."


The first promotional spot for the much talked about episode dropped online last week and while we didn't really know what to make of it ourselves, fans flocked to social media to praise the cast for taking on such a difficult subject.

"Everyone is asking, ‘Is it hard to do this? Is it hard to be back at work?'", Michele added. "But the truth is it's no harder at work than it is in life so we might as well all be together as a family supporting each other to get through this together."

Michele hasn't spoken about the relationship to the media for quite some time, but she was more than happy to tell the Australian magazine how lucky she felt to have dated her co-star. "One day I came home and Cory was there with this plaque from the set that we always had in the glee club. And I said, 'What's this doing here?' And he said, 'I took it!' He said, 'This summer we are going to take it all over everywhere we go and take pictures of us with this plaque!' And that's what we did!"

"I really woke up every single day feeling like I was... in some sort of spell or something, that I was lucky enough to have him in my life. I feel like what happened with Cory['s death] was [so small] in the scheme of who he was and his life. There was no greater man than Cory, so for the time we spent together, I consider myself very lucky."

The Quarterback airs on Sky 1 on Friday October 18th.