twitter.comThe woman behind the Glee leak is ready to speak out.
What started out as a Twitter slip-up turned into a Glee mess that enraged a huge portion of the show's fanbase. At the center of the storm was 21-year-old Nicole Crowther, who last week took to her Twitter to reveal some (spoiler alert!) very important plot points about Glee's prom episode and ultimately led executive producer Brad Falchuck to call her out in a very public way.
But Crowther is insisting that what people think happened is not the real story. Like what? For example, she says she was never an extra during the Glee episode in question, and claims she got her information from a friend during a small gathering.
She talks to us about how it all went down, plus the personal and professional consequences of her tweeting ways…
How did she find out the info? Nicole says she went to a dinner party a few weekends ago with some friends, and among the group was a fellow extra who had just finished work as a background actress on Glee's prom episode.
"I have not worked on the show Glee since October 2010. [The extra] came to us and was talking to us about it," she tells us. "I met her a couple times [before] and she just divulged the information. The spoiler that she told me was sort of unbelievable. I didn't know if it was the truth."
The next thing she did was a moment she says she would "take back in a heartbeat." She went to Twitter and started speculating on what she had heard with Glee fans.
"Honestly, somebody did ask, and I was reporting as a gossip columnist almost," Nicole says. "I knew I wouldn't get in trouble since I wasn't actually on the set, but that wasn't part of it. I was just enjoying talking with others about it. Speculating and hearing their ideas on it. I didn't know if it was real, and I was answering people's questions from what I had heard. Of course, I had no intention for any of this to happen, it just blew up."
And blow up it did.
Pretty soon, Glee fans caught wind of her spoiler tweets, and before she knew it, Falchuk was tweeting to her: "hope you're qualified to do something besides work in entertainment," among other things.
"The whole thing about Brad saying that I'm fired, it's just not true. Because you can't be fired if you're not an employee," says Nicole.
But just because Brad couldn't technically dismiss her, she still felt the fire from the public call-out.
"At first, I was just stunned. I think my heart stopped beating, just because I am a fan of the show and Brad and the cast members and Ryan Murphy. I just look up to them as being successful in writing and creating this great show. I was very stunned that he even said anything because he had just confirmed it. He confirmed it, and then I knew that it was true by him saying that and so did everybody else. And that's why I believe it has turned into what it has."
After Falchuk's tweet, it was officially common knowledge among even the most casual Glee fans that spoilers had been leaked, and the Gleek army weren't about to let Nicole forget what kind of crap storm she had caused. "I was getting very, very hateful messages. And you know that's expected. It's a little ironic to me that one of the last things I tweeted was something like: "you're fans of the show, but the show is to show you about not bullying." It's pretty ironic that fans of the show are going off and doing the opposite. I got called every name in the book."
Nicole hasn't just been dealing with fan backlash. Professionally and personally, she says she's been "black-balled" by every agency in town and by all her friends.
"The agency I was with suspended me for two or three weeks. I've been told that I've been black-balled at all the agencies," she tells us. "My friends who worked on the show Glee, two of them relayed to me that on set on Monday that they were no longer allowed to talk to me. I've lost 15 to 20 friends that will no longer talk to me."
In the end, Nicole simply wishes she could go back in time and do things differently. "I had no idea it would even come close to anything it's been. I regret it and I can totally understand, not only where the fans are coming from, but why Brad and other people from Fox are furious with me. I can understand their point of view."
The only thing she wishes to let people know now is that she has been, and always will be, careful while serving her extra duties.
"I've worked on a bunch of different shows, and something I really want to make clear for any shows I work on, I have never and I never will spoil things for shows I work on. Because I have those values and I respect them," Nicole insists. "There's been shows where I found out plots and I wanted to say something but I didn't. I do respect the Glee cast and I am a fan. It's too bad it's gone the way it has."
Glee fans, since this is a personal one for you all, we'd love to hear what you think! Do you believe Nicole has been treated fairly during the scandal?