GLEE's Mark Salling Shares Monteith's Passsing Leaves 'Big Hole' in Final Season

In a new interview with PEOPLE, GLEE's Mark Salling, who portrays Noah "Puck" Puckerman on the FOX musical dramedy spoke about the loss of his co-star and close friend Cory Monteith, who passed away from a drug overdose at the age of 31 in 2013.

"Cory Monteith was a great leader as a character and person in real life," Salling tells PEOPLE. "It's a big, obvious hole. I still think about him all the time."

He continues, "He was kind of like the quarterback of the show, which sounds cliché because the [tribute] episode was called that, but he was kind of like that in real life."

Speaking on his return to the show and reuniting with his cast mates for its final season, Salling shares, "It's like we never left."

FOX recently announced the sixth and final season of GLEE will return on Friday, January 9th.

About GLEE:

GLEE is a musical comedy about a group of ambitious and talented kids who escape the harsh realities of high school by joining a GLEE club, where they find strength, acceptance and, ultimately, their voice. Last year's graduates and aspiring singers, RACHEL BERRY (Lea Michelle) and KURT HUMMEL (Chris Colfer), packed their bags for New York and enrolled at a prestigious performing arts school, NYADA, where they made new friends and learned the cruel realities of college. These naïve freshmen moved into a Brooklyn loft, signed up for internships, auditioned for Broadway shows and gained a roommate when SANTANA LOPEZ (Naya Rivera) moved to the Big Apple.

Since its debut, GLEE has become a bona fide cultural phenomenon, received prestigious honors, including a Golden Globe Award and a Peabody Award, and singlehandedly made GLEE clubs cool again. The series boasts critical acclaim, a die-hard fan base, two Grammy Award nominations, two platinum and five gold albums, more than 43 million songs and more than 13 million albums sold worldwide, two sold-out concert tours, a 3-D movie and four Emmy Awards and three Golden Globes, including the award for Best Television Series - Comedy or Musical.

Source: PEOPLE

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