The world has a way of coming up with some wild celebrity rumours.
There’s the conspiracy that Avril Lavigne died back in 2003 and was replaced by a clone, or the theory Katy Perry is in fact JonBenét Ramsey, but what these rumours have in common is that no one really believes them.
Most celebrity rumours are recognised for what they are: rumours. However, there is one bizarre theory that for the past decade has spread far and wide with millions around the world convinced it could actually be true.
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For the past 10 years, there’s one question the internet has been asking, and most seem to think the answer is ‘no’:
“Can Lea Michele read?”
The Glee star has been plagued by rumours of illiteracy since the hit show came to an end back in 2015, and she’s decided it’s finally time she put the rumours to bed.
“I’ll never forget, like, the same day that that all this came out, Donald Trump said he was gonna punch John McCain in the face or something like that,” Michele recalled on the latest episode of Jake Shane’s podcast Therapuss.
“It was 2015 and he said something like so wild, but what was trending online more was ‘Lea Michele can’t read’.
“Ryan Murphy [the creator of Glee] called me and he was like, ‘Have you heard this rumour?’ and I was like, ‘No, what’s going on?'”
For a decade, Michele has been plagued by online rumours claiming she had someone whose job it was to read her lines to her, or that her team were the ones behind her Instagram captions.
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The rumours became so widespread, Michele eventually decided to lean in, sharing a rare Instagram Story joking about her own illiteracy.
But in order to prove once and for all that it all is just a wild rumour, Michele decided to read on camera.
Watch the video above.
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She read several cards whilst on Shane’s podcast, staring defiantly into the camera afterwards as Shane announced, “And not a f—ing stutter”.
Despite Michele’s seemingly lighthearted attitude toward the wild theory, she admitted there are times that her fans’ belief that she can’t read has weighed on her.
“There are moments I get so frustrated because I’m one of the only women in my whole family to get accepted to college,” she explained.
“My mother and my mother’s whole family was extremely poor, from the Bronx, not very well-educated and my parents moved me from the Bronx to New Jersey to get a good education and to thrive, and I did.
“And my parents and my family are so proud of that. It really was so important for my grandmother to see me, and for someone to minimise that, it’s so sad and so frustrating.
“But yeah, it’s wild.”
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