Lea Michele is preparing to say goodbye to her role as Rachel Berry on the hit TV series Glee. The show will air part one of its final episode on Friday night.

In a recent interview with the L.A. Times, Lea Michele talks about the show that made her famous–and paired her with her first real love, the late Corey Monteith.

Monteith died of an accidental overdose in Vancouver in July of 2013. He and Lea Michele were in love. He was honored in a farewell episode in October of that year.

“That was the day I fell to my knees and cried. I literally had to call my mother to come,” Lea said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly.

Glee's 2-part series finale to feature footage of Cory Monteith http://t.co/4nOpxYw37M pic.twitter.com/03ZQFSX9j4

— CBC News (@CBCNews) March 20, 2015

When discussing the show’s finale, Lea Michele remembered the first time the cast was together.

“I will always remember the pilot episode. Singing “Don’t Stop Believing” with the original kids. That will be forever frozen in my mind. Everything from then on was just this whole sort of spinning,” she said.

E! News writes about one scene in particular that was viewed prior to Friday night’s Glee finale. The cast even shared word of this scene with Ellen DeGeneres during a recent visit to her show.

“Will (Matt Morrison) appears to be singing Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s “Teach Your Children” to a room full of strangers and friends alike, including his current students and a few alumni including Tina, Artie, Sam, Blaine, and Kurt, but it’s clear that the song is really aimed at one person in particular, and that person is Rachel Berry,” the publication writes.

“We were crying so hard they actually cut,” Lea Michele told Ellen DeGeneres.

“She starts finding it hard to catch her breath about halfway through, which means we couldn’t catch our breath halfway through, and by the time Will blows her a kiss at the end, we were a blubbery mess. We can only imagine what we’ll be like tonight when the show says its final, final goodbyes with a two-hour finale, including a whole hour of brand new flashbacks to 2009, when the original members of the glee club first met. The second hour will flash forward five years to 2020, and then it will all be over, and we’ll have to find our emotional cover songs, clever insults, and inspirational speeches about loving ourselves as we are somewhere else,” E! News reports.

It must be bittersweet for Lea Michele and the rest of the Glee cast to know that tonight’s episode is part one of the show’s finale. It must be especially bittersweet for Lea Michele–even though she has moved on with a new love–to realize Corey Monteith isn’t sharing this milestone with the rest of them.