When Glee debuted in 2009, very few of the cast members were famous names. Jane Lynch was the most established of the bunch, having acted in popular movies like Best In Show, The Forty-Year-Old Virgin, and Role Models. Several main cast members, including Matthew Morrison, Lea Michele, and Jenna Ushkowitz, had experience on Broadway, but not much experience on television. In fact, other than Lynch, the cast were all relative newcomers, but Glee rocketed them to stardom.
The final season of Glee ended in 2015. While many of the main cast members have had difficulty landing roles after Glee, a handful of them have found real success in recent years. These are the seven former main cast members of Glee who have had the most success since the show went off the air.
7 Melissa Benoist
Melissa Benoist joined the cast of Glee in the fourth season as Marley Rose, and she was upgraded to the main cast for season five. However, she was completely written out of the show in season six (and was one of the only main cast members not to appear in the series finale) because she landed the lead role on the CBS TV drama Supergirl. She has also appeared in films like Whiplash and The Longest Ride. She made her Broadway debut in 2018, in the lead role of Beautiful: The Carole King Musical.
6 Harry Shum Jr.
Harry Shum Jr. played Mike Chang on Glee, a shy football player who turns out to be an amazing dancer. Shum barely had any lines in the first season of the show, but by season three he was upgraded to series regular status. However, he left the main cast the following year and only made guest appearances in the show’s final three seasons. From 2016 to 2019, Shum played the main role of Magnus Bane on the very popular fantasy television series Shadowhunters. In 2018, he won the People’s Choice Award for Male TV Star of 2018 for his work on that show. He has also acted in several films since he left Glee, including the smash hit Crazy Rich Asians.
5 Jane Lynch
Jane Lynch was already an established actor when she took her role on Glee, and she has continued to work consistently since the Fox musical comedy ended. She has hosted the game show Hollywood Game Night since 2013, and she has made guest appearances on all sorts of TV comedies. She also plays a main role on the critically acclaimed Amazon Prime original series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Lynch has won numerous Emmy awards in recent years, including Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series and Outstanding Host for a Reality or Reality-Competition Program.
4 Chris Colfer
Chris Colfer played Kurt Hummel on all six seasons of Glee. The character of Kurt was not even in the original script of Glee, but thanks to Colfer’s performance, Kurt eventually became one of the show’s central characters. However, Colfer has mostly stepped back from acting in recent years. Instead, he has been focusing on his burgeoning career as a writer. He is the author of the New York Times bestselling young adult series The Land of Stories. He has also written a film and a picture book, and he has several more writing projects in the works.
3 Jenna Ushkowitz
Jenna Ushkowitz played Tina Cohen-Chang on Glee, a talented singer who always finds herself in someone else’s shadow. However, in 2018 she achieved something that surely made all of her former Glee co-stars envious – she won a Tony Award. The Tony Awards are the most prestigious awards for Broadway theatre, and Ushkowitz won hers for producing the musical Once On This Island (which featured her former Glee co-star Alex Newell in one of the lead roles). Ushkowitz also appeared as an actor in 2016 in the Broadway musical Waitress.
2 Lea Michele
Lea Michele played Rachel Berry, the lead vocalist of the glee club and the protagonist of Glee. She has been the subject of quite a bit of controversy recently, as several of her former cast members have spoken out about her behaviour on set. Nevertheless, she has been one of the most successful Glee cast members since the show went off the air. She played main roles in two short-lived television shows, Scream Queens and The Mayor. She has also released several albums, written a bestselling book, and gone on concert tours.
1 Darren Criss
Darren Criss is almost certainly the biggest star to come out of Glee. He first appeared as Blaine Anderson on season two, and was upgraded to the main cast in season three. He remained a main cast member for the rest of the show’s run. In 2015, he took over the lead role in Hedwig and the Angry Inch on Broadway. In 2018, he starred in The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, for which he won his first Emmy Award. In 2020, he starred in the Netflix series Hollywood and the Quibi series Royalties, which he also created. It’s clear that Darren Criss has become a major Hollywood star.
