Classy, sultry and confident, actress Lea Michele looks spectacular on the cover of Prestige magazine Hong Kong edition. The gorgeous actress looks relaxed and optimistic as she dishes on exciting behind the scene details concerning ‘Glee’ along with more personal aspects. If you’ve ever wondered how much time it takes making a single episode of the TV series, the star satisfies this curiosity.

Turns out just one episode takes over a week:’Each episode takes eight days. Ten if it’s a longer, heavier episode. And we generally work about 17 hours a day. Within a day you can be doing one or two or three hours of shooting, filming, dancing and recording. Basically I try to explain to people that creating an episode of Glee is like jumping out of an airplane and falling to the ground – you learn your lines, you record your songs, you learn your choreography and we somehow land with our feet on the ground.’

Still, as we suspected, working on the set is really as much fun as it looks. This aspect gives her the energy to work and adapt to challenges: “If I weren’t having fun, because the work is so hard, there’s no way that I could do it. It’s incredibly challenging and it’s incredibly taxing. But if it wasn’t fun, I don’t think that there’d be any physical way that we could get through how difficult and strenuous it is sometimes.”

One might think that all the work put in creating a successful TV series makes actors seek other forms of entertainment, however for the star, TV is somewhat of a guilty pleasure, being her preferred relaxing activity. “It’s all that I really do with my free time, because I work so much and I’m not really a big going-out girl.

I don’t go out and I don’t do stuff like that, so for me if I’m not outside spending some time with friends over a nice dinner, I’m generally home watching television because it’s just the best way for me to wind down from my day”, she admits. She even considers reality TV a guilty pleasure: “I will literally watch anything, from Hoarders to Say Yes to the Dress. Anything like that. I just think that sort of mindless entertainment really will get your mind off anything that’s going on in your life.”

Asked what it was like working with Ashton Kutcher on ‘New Year’s Eve’ movie, particularly the kiss scene, she replied: ‘He was also just so helpful with me in being comfortable and just helping me out, being that it was my first film.’ The said scene turned out one of the easiest: ‘The first thing I did was that scene. We didn’t do it too many times. Garry Marshall is a very fast director, so maybe we just did it a handful of times.’

Her confidence shines through as she admits being flattered by her sex symbol status and as she openly admits she has no less than 14 tattoos but keeps her wild side to herself: ‘Do I have a wild side? Well, I do have 14 tattoos. But I also do come home every single night and watch reality TV with my cat. I’d say for the most part I’m a very outgoing person. I have a lot of energy. I love being around people. But I’m not wild in the sense of “going out” wild. I’m much more homebody. I’m much more being in intimate places with people. I definitely say I am an outgoing person. I’m an energetic, spontaneous person. But the wild stuff…if it’s there, it’s private.’

Photo courtesy of Prestige Hong Kong