Jane Lynch has issued a full statement about her Glee castmate Mark Salling, after she was shocked by news of his suicide earlier this week (beg29Jan18).
The actress and comedienne called Mark’s death “sad and very tragic” when she was caught by TMZ cameras hours after Salling’s dead body was discovered hanging from a tree near a Sunland, California baseball park on Tuesday morning (30Jan18), adding, “I’m brokenhearted over it.”
Her reluctance to give a full statement at the time is understandable considering the dead actor was awaiting sentencing for serious child pornography charges.
Instead, she shared Glee producer Tim Davis‘ remarks on social media. He wrote: “Let me be clear. Having compassion for #MarkSalling in no way minimizes his crimes, nor does it minimize the pain and devastation of the victims of those crimes. I’m just saying stop adding to his family’s pain. This was their son. If you’re without sin, feel free to cast stones.”
But now Lynch has offered her own statement, calling her 35-year-old former Glee castmate “a troubled, troubled guy”.
“This is a very sad end to it, but I know that he’s at peace now. He’s in the arms of a beneficent force,” Jane told Us Weekly. “I know life was very, very hard for Mark. I think we all do the best we can at the end of the day. “He was a hard guy to get to know.”
She also shared some memories of working with Salling, adding, “He took videos of the stages and everything. He was so happy to be coming to work, to be on the show. He wrote a song and videotaped his day being on Glee… It was a big jump for him in his career, and also, he had a job and was in with this group of really great kids.
“I think he knew that he was breathing rarefied air. There was so much joy and happiness in his musical video that he shot for himself. Fox made him take it down. But it was a sweet, beautiful expression of his joy and being in Glee.”
Salling was expected to get four to seven years in prison as a part of a plea deal linked to his arrest in December, 2015 following a police raid on his home. In December (17), he pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography involving a prepubescent minor.
