"Glee" Season 5 just got a whole lot sassier, with E! News reporting that NeNe Leakes is set to reprise her role as Coach Roz Washington in multiple episodes.
"Glee" fans last saw Leakes in the Season 4 episode "All or Nothing," where she served as coach of the Cheerios after replacing the fired Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch). Leakes was also a regular on NBC's recently cancelled "The New Normal," and continues to participate in Bravo's "Real Housewives of Atlanta" series along with her own show, "I Dream of NeNe," which will air a wedding spinoff this fall.
There's no word yet on which episodes of "Glee" Season 5 Leakes will appear in. The show's first two episodes back will feature a Beatles tribute, while episode three will deal with the death of star Cory Monteith and will serve to write his character, Finn Hudson, out of the series. Fox president Kevin Reilly told reporters at the Television Critics Association summer press tour that "the episode will deal directly with the incidents involved in Cory’s passing and the drug abuse in particular. Ryan [Murphy] himself is going to shoot some PSAs with the cast, in which -- as cast members, as friends of Cory’s -- they’re going to speak directly to the audience. I think they’re going to be very, very impactful."
In the wake of Monteith's death, Fox pushed the premiere of "Glee" back a week to Thursday, Sept. 26. Reilly described the Beatles episodes as very "celebratory," pointing out, "It's a little difficult to come out of the gate right away then have to recover. We'll have the Cory episode, then we'll go on hiatus for three weeks for the World Series, and that gives us a natural break to reset."
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