Rumors won’t rain on Lea Michele’s parade.

On the latest episode of Therapuss with Jake Shane, the Broadway phenomenon cleared up the ongoing rumor that she doesn’t know how to read.

“For everyone who thinks that I can’t fucking read, I was on the debate team! I mean, I would, like, write speeches,” she said before Jake asked if she thinks the rumors are “hysterical.” Lea said her reaction “depends on the day.”

“Sometimes, I think it’s crazy that people care enough about me that they would make up something,” she explained. “That someone has so little to do in their life and their day that they would waste it on me is, like, hilarious to me.”

The Funny Girl star also opened up about her family’s history, revealing that she was almost a first-generation college student.

“There are moments when I get so fucking frustrated by it because I’m one of the only women in my whole family to get accepted to college,” she shared. “My mother and my mother’s whole family was extremely poor, from the Bronx, not very well educated … my parents moved me from the Bronx to New Jersey to get a good education and to thrive, and I did.”

She continued, “My parents and my family are so proud of that. It was really important for my grandmother to see me. And, so, for someone to minimize that, it’s so sad and so frustrating. It’s wild. It’s a crazy thing.”

The actor, who rose to mainstream success thanks to her role as Rachel Berry on Glee, revealed that showrunner Ryan Murphy was among the first to ask her if she had seen the discourse. “He was like, ‘Have you heard this rumor?’ and I was like, ‘No, what’s going on?’” she said.

She then proved her literacy skills when she snatched a stack of cue cards from the podcast host during the show’s advice segment and decided to read them herself.

ICYMI, fans started questioning whether Lea could read back in 2016. In Naya Rivera’s memoir, Sorry Not Sorry: Dreams, Mistakes, and Growing Up, Lea’s former co-star wrote that she refused to improvise any scenes on the hit show. While she never alleged she couldn’t read, it still caused speculation.

This isn’t the first time Lea’s addressed the allegations, either. In September 2022, she told The New York Times, “I went to Glee every single day; I knew my lines every single day. And then there’s a rumor online that I can’t read or write? It’s sad. It really is. I think often if I were a man, a lot of this wouldn’t be the case.”

Catch Lea Michele’s full interview on Therapuss with Jake Shane below.