This seating arrangement was funny, girl.
Actress and singer Lea Michele was sarcastically seated behind talk show host Ziwe Fumudoh on the 2023 US Open men’s finals on the Arthur Ashe Stadium in Latest York City on Sunday.
Fumodoh, 31, gave the impression to be in shiny spirits, wearing an equally shiny yellow tweed jacket while seated next to her friend, supermodel Emily Ratajkowski. The “Funny Girl” Broadway star, meanwhile, was seated next to her husband, Zandy Reich.
The awkward positioning of the foursome within the VIP suite throughout the Novak Djokovic and Daniil Medvedev face-off raised some eyebrows. Lower than nine months ago, Fumudoh interviewed Michele’s former “Glee” costar Amber Riley about allegations of racism on the hit television show’s set.
Fumodoh asked Riley, “Now, speaking of getting down within the muck, you said that considered one of your famous coworkers wasn’t racist. Did you mean that she was?”
While Riley did her best to deflect Fumudoh’s questions, the host was quite adamant. “Would you say that your famous coworker (Michele) doesn’t see race and is, in reality, rude to all of her coworkers?” she asked in 2022.
“I feel that she would probably say she doesn’t see race,” Riley said. “But everyone does.”
In 2020, actress Samantha Ware, who once appeared on “Glee,” individually accused Michele of being a mean girl on set and implied that she may need “racist tendencies.”
“I knew from Day One once I attempted to introduce myself. There was nothing gradual about it,” Ware told Variety. “As soon as she decided that she didn’t like me, it was very evident.”
Ware, who played Jane Hayward on the Ryan Murphy series, first brought up her issues with Michele when she posted on X, the platform formerly often known as Twitter, about George Floyd — who died within the custody of Minneapolis police — using the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter.
“If you tweet, ‘Black lives matter,’ that might mean you might have an understanding of what that hashtag means, however it’s clear that it doesn’t,” Ware explained.
“Does Lea even know what a microaggression is? I don’t know. All that her apology did was affirm that she hasn’t learned anything,” she said on the time. “Am I calling Lea a racist? No. Does Lea have racist tendencies? I feel Lea suffers from a symptom of living on this world in an industry that’s tailored to white people.”
Ware also blasted Michele on X, saying she made Ware’s first television job “A LIVING HELL” and chastised her for “OTHER TRAUMATIC MICROAGRESSIONS THAT MADE ME QUESTION A CAREER IN HOLLYWOOD.”
Fans weren’t the one ones that recognized Fumudoh and Michele’s seating arrangement on Sunday. “Watch What Happens Live” producer Frank Costa tweeted a picture of the group and wrote, “Lea Michele sitting behind Ziwe and Emily Ratajkowski on the US Open. I want a full breakdown of any & all interactions.”
Michelle, for her part, apologized following Ware’s claims of “traumatic microaggresions” on set in a lengthy statement via Instagram in June 2020.
“I apologize for my behavior and for any pain which I even have caused,” she shared on the time. “One of the vital lessons of the previous few weeks is that we’d like to take the time to listen and study other people’s perspectives and any role we now have played or anything we will do to assist address the injustices that they face.”
She continued, “Whether it was my privileged position and perspective that caused me to be perceived as insensitive or inappropriate at times or whether it was just my immaturity and me just being unnecessarily difficult, I apologize for my behavior and for any pain which I even have caused. All of us can grow and alter and I even have definitely used these past several months to reflect my very own shortcomings.” Michele also denied that she ever “judged others by their background or color of their skin.”
