This is the most bizarre rumor going around about a Hollywood star

In the meantime, I have really gotten used to the gossip machine in Hollywood. Affairs, illegitimate children, plagiarism; everything has happened at some point. We in the Netherlands have also figured that out by now. But there is one rumor that has been circulating for a while (feel free to call it a conspiracy theory) from Hollywood, and I find it so bizarre that I would almost believe it. I absolutely do not, but still: how do people come up with this? This is so strange and so specific, even some fans believe this.

The person in question is Lea Michele, well known to all of us from Glee. What is supposedly going on with her? She would be illiterate. As in, she cannot read. No idea how she then memorized the script of every episode of Glee (maybe it was read to her), but anyway, people really believe that Lea Michele cannot read.

The origin of this bizarre rumor is a 40-minute video called Lea Michele Is Illiterate, made by Jaye Hunt and Robert Ackerman for their podcast One More Thing. The video has since been taken offline, but not before the entire internet ran with it. Lea Michele was also made aware of this rumor and responded on Twitter.

But how does such a rumor get out into the world, let alone that you can (and to be very honest: want to) make a forty-minute video about it? Well, that is based on a number of things that people see as ‘evidence’:

• Lea Michele started acting at a young age, when she couldn't read at all. After that, she was so busy that she never learned.
• She was part of the show Spring Awakening for years, which was always the same show. So she only had to learn all the lines by heart once.
• She often uses emojis in her Instagram captions because... she cannot write. If there is a block of text, someone else does that for her.
• After Glee, she went on to star in Scream Queens, which is also from Ryan Murphy. Convenient, because he already knew she couldn't read and knew how to handle it.
• Of all the photos where she is signing something (people have apparently figured this out), there is not a single instance where her pen actually touches the paper.
• Okay, once there is, in a photo where she is signing a wall, but her name is already there and she is just putting a line under it.

I don't know why, but I find this really a hilarious rumor. Imagine being an adult woman, not illiterate, and having to defend yourself that you can indeed read and write. Hopefully, she can also see a bit of the humor in it.