Kalen Gorman obit

Kalen Gorman, Producer of Behind-the-Scenes Content for ‘Glee,’ Dies at 59

Her work generated hundreds of millions of views on YouTube and other platforms while delighting fans of the show. 

She was not on the list.

Kalen Gorman, who produced interviews and other behind-the-scenes content for Ryan Murphy’s Glee, entertainment that generated hundreds of millions of views on YouTube and other platforms, has died. She was 59.

Gorman died Tuesday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles after a battle with breast cancer, a publicist announced.

Gorman collaborated with actors, hosts, show creators, production crew and others on scripted and improvised marketing shoots that made for more than 300 pieces of content for every episode of Glee during its first five seasons (2009-14).

“I always thought, God, for the fans who love this show, this is what they want to see,” she said in an interview in April. “They want to feel like they’re part of it.”

Gorman later produced behind-the-scenes content for the 2017 first season of Murphy’s anthology series Feud, starring Susan Sarandon as Bette Davis and Jessica Lange as Joan Crawford, and for Showtime’s Homeland.

Born in Toronto and raised in Los Angeles, Gorman began her career assisting legendary publicist Pat Kingsley at PMK Public Relations before moving into television in 1999 as a senior talent executive on Martin Short’s 1999-2000 syndicated talk show.

She then had segment-producer roles at NBCUniversal (on shows including The Weakest Link), E! and Hurwitz Creative before joining Fox in 2008. She worked on Bones, The Mindy Project and Brooklyn Nine-Nine before focusing on Glee.

More recently, Gorman worked for All3Media America, Discovery and Studio71, where she exec produced and directed the Snapchat series Keepin’ It Real With Keke Palmer, Step by Step With Matt Steffanina and Worst Firsts With Brittany Furlan and the Facebook Watch show Ladies First With Grace Helbig.

She also co-created the VH1 series You Rock With …

She has no survivors. Her brother Alexx Van Dyne, an animation writer, died in May 2023 at age 61. Another brother, Kerry Gorman, died in 1992 at age 37.