Elle Fanning’s ‘Girl From Plainville’ Character Has a Surprising Connection to Glee’s Rachel Berry

usmagazine.com:

Life imitating art? Elle Fanning‘s Hulu series features a shocking connection to Glee‘s Rachel Berry, played by Lea Michele.In The Girl From Plainville — which is based on the case of Michelle Carter, a teenager who allegedly urged her boyfriend to commit suicide via text message — Fanning, 23, rehearses a monologue that Rachel Berry gave her fellow Glee Club members in the season 5 episode “The Quarterback.” The episode of the Fox show was inspired by the 2013 death of Cory Monteith and features several nods to his real-life romance with Michele, 35, who he was dating at the time.“I loved him and he loved me,” the fictional Michelle says tearfully into the mirror. “He loved all of you guys.

I know he did. I love to sing in the car, and before Finn, I used to sing alone. This was the first song that we would sing together when we used to drive around together.”After her first performance of the speech, she pauses and replays the scene on her tablet so that she can recite it alongside the episode.

Carter then sings Adele’s “Make You Feel My Love” — just like Rachel does on Glee — while crying before the episode ends with her taking a deep breath and staring calmly ahead at her reflection.Carter, now 24, made headlines in 2014 after her then-boyfriend, Conrad Roy, died by suicide after poisoning himself with carbon monoxide fumes in his truck.

In the wake of his death, authorities discovered texts from the Massachusetts native on his phone, in which she encouraged him to stay in the car even though he wanted to leave and not carry out his plan to take his own life.