Singer Charice Pempengco, who stars on the hit show ‘Glee’ suffered a dramatic loss yesterday. Her estranged father was stabbed to death in her hometown in the Philippines.

The singer pulled out of a scheduled concert in Singapore, and canceled her shows for Wednesday and Thursday so she could rush home.

“I am not going to be there to be part of David Foster and Friends concert,” she Tweeted on Tuesday. “I have to go back to the Philippines as soon as possible to be with my family.”

Her father, 40-year-old construction worker Ricky Pempengco, had been at a small grocery store in San Pedro township south of Manila late Monday when he brushed against a drunk man who became angry and stabbed him with an ice pick in the chest and back, according to the Laguna province police chief, Senior Supt. Gilbert Cruz.

A manhunt has been launched for the suspect, with a 20,000 pesos ($470) award for information leading to his arrest. Cruz said the killing appeared random and there was no indication the suspect and victim had any prior grudges.

Charice had long been estranged from her father. Local media reported that Charice’s mother left him when Charice and her younger brother were small children.

In another Twitter post Tuesday, Charice said she once had a “really great relationship” with her father before their family troubles began.

“I loved him and I will still love him,” she wrote. “He’s still my Dad after all.”

The 19-year-old songstress, born Charmaine Clarice Relucio Pempengco, is widely known throughout Asia from concerts and TV talent shows in the Philippines and South Korea.

She has said she would borrow bus fare to travel to amateur singing contests, and eventually broke into the American market when she was invited at age 15 to appear on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” after the show had seen a fan video of her on YouTube that went viral.

She also appeared on the “Oprah Winfrey Show” and has had a recurring role on “Glee” as the character Sunshine Corazon.

That’s a horrible loss. My prayers go out to her and her family!

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Seriously, this is just getting old. After saying they weren’t leaving – then saying they were – now we’re back to ‘Glee’s’ major characters aren’t going anywhere after season three.

The biggest Glee news coming out of Comic-Con: Despite Ryan Murphy saying that Rachel, Kurt, and Finn will graduate at end of this coming third season, stars Lea Michele, Chris Colfer, and Cory Monteith will return for season 4. At today’s panel in San Diego, Glee co-creator and exec producer Brad Falchuk told the audience that even though the three were set to finish high school, “because they’re graduating doesn’t mean they’re leaving the show. If you have Lea Michele under contract, you don’t say, ‘We’re gonna let you go.’”

“It was never our plan or our intention to let them go,” Fulchuk added. “They are not done with the show after this season.”

That’s a big about-face from what Murphy told The Hollywood Reporter: “You can keep them on the show for six years and people will criticize you for not being realistic, or you can be really true to life and say when they started the show they were very clearly sophomores and they should graduate at the end of their senior year.”

Murphy also said he made the decision in concert with Michele and Colfer. “I involved Chris and Lea and they thought that was a good idea,” he told THR. “They both trust the writing and trust me and felt that it would be great to have an open and closed experience for them to go out while they were on top.”

EW confirmed that all of the actors have signed traditional seven-year contracts so it’s not like their deals were going to expire after next season, though the studio retains the right to drop them year after year. Chord Overstreet’s exit, however, is still a go, Falchuk said. In fact, he won’t return this fall for any episodes. Falchuk said Overstreet was offered a deal to return for 10 episodes with the possibility of becoming a series regular, but Overstreet declined in favor of other opportunities.

If they come back again and say they ARE leaving, I just may scream out loud. Enough already!

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Chris Colfer, who won a Golden Globe portraying Kurt on ‘Glee’ found out he was leaving the hit show after seeing the news on Twitter with the rest of us.

“I didn’t necessarily know that it was going to be our last season next year,” he tells Access Hollywood. “I knew something like that was coming up eventually. I mean, we can’t be there forever.”

Like many graduates, he says the milestone is bittersweet.

“Do I want to leave the show? Absolutely not,” he says in another interview, to Extra. “This is home for me. But I understand that there’s time for a conclusion.”

Still, he got a nice going-away gift: an Emmy nomination on Thursday.

“As a performer, I feel so fulfilled,” Colfer, 21, tells Extra. “It’s just a huge category. It’s best actor in a comedy, and we all know that Kurt’s not funny, so I’m very, very happy to be a part of it.”

That’s not too cool Ryan Murphy!

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esterday a bombshell was dropped when ‘Glee’ creator Ryan Murphy confirmed that Lea Michele, Cory Monteith and Chris Colfer would be leaving the show after the next season.

The three will graduate from high school – and move on.

But the door isn’t closed on at least two of the original cast members.

Just as “Glee” fans began to contemplate a life without Rachel Berry and Kurt Hummel, they may not end up having to say goodbye after all.

Yesterday, The Hollywood Reporter broke the news that stars Lea Michele (Rachel), Chris Colfer (Kurt) and Corey Monteith (Finn) would be graduating from the hit musical dramedy at the end of the coming third season. And while that has some fans bummed, a new report reveals that creator Ryan Murphy has bigger plans for the first two stars.

RumorFix.com says that Michele and Colfer will star in a spinoff show that places their characters in New York, a thread that began pulling near the end of last season. In New York for Nationals, their characters snuck onto the stage of “Wicked” and sang one of the songs. The characters decided that, following their graduation, they’d move out to the city.

While not announcing the news himself, Murphy said in his interview with The Hollywood Reporter that he planned on focusing on that storyline during the upcoming third season.

“I’m much more interested in Lea’s character — not so much on her relationship with Finn, but more on what her dreams are beyond high school and how she plans on getting them,” he said.

I like the idea of them creating a new show around these characters. I would much rather see them in a whole new show, than try and pretend they’re forever seniors ala ’90210′. It will be interesting to see, that’s for sure!

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The Hollywood Reporter revealed some sad news for ‘Glee’ fans this morning. Show regulars Lea Michele, Cory Monteith and Cris Colfer WILL NOT be back for the fourth season of ‘Glee’.

In an exclusive interview with The Hollywood Reporter, series co-creator Ryan Murphy said that the three regulars will be among the characters who graduate at the end of the fall’s upcoming third season.

Colfer, Michele and Monteith are not going to be back at all for Season 4. Murphy tells THR: “You can keep them on the show for six years and people will criticize you for not being realistic, or you can be really true to life and say when they started the show they were very clearly sophomores and they should graduate at the end of their senior year.”

Murphy added that planning for the future beyond high school will be a heavy theme during Season 3, noting that “more characters are leaving than are staying” when graduation time comes at the season’s end.

“We’ve never done anything by the book,” he said, adding that who’s graduating and who’s staying will be revealed in the Sept. 20 season premiere. “We made that decision and I involved Chris and Lea and they thought that was a good idea. They both trust the writing and trust me and felt that it would be great to have an open and closed experience for them to go out while they were on top.”

What do you think about this news? I love ‘Glee’, and I love these characters, but I don’t think I’ll be too upset when they don’t return. I kind of like the idea of bringing in new cast members!

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‘Glee’s Cory Monteith is opening up about a troubled, shocking childhood. The 29-year-old actor (can you believe he’s 29!?) tells Parade Magazine about how his parents divorce sent him down a troubling path.

“I’m not Finn Hudson,” Monteith says of his beloved Glee character in the exclusive interview with Shawna Malcom in Sunday’s PARADE. Discussing his troubled past as he never has before, Monteith explains, “I’m lucky on so many counts—I’m lucky to be alive.”

His parents divorced when he was 7, and by 13, Monteith—once a promising student who at age 5 could read at a fourth-grade level—was skipping school to get drunk and smoke pot. Monteith estimate s that by the age of 16, when he quit for good, he had attended 12 different schools, including alternative programs for troubled teens. “I burned a lot of bridges,” he says. “I was out of control.”

At that point, so was his drug use. Monteith admits, “I had a serious problem.” What kinds of drugs? “Anything and everything, as much as possible.”

Afraid that he “could die,” his mother and a group of friends staged an intervention when he was 19. “That’s when I first went to rehab. I did the stint but then went back to doing exactly what I left off doing.” Monteith might have continued down that path if not for what he calls “the crystallizing event.”

“I stole a significant amount of money from a family member,” he admits. “I knew I was going to get caught, but I was so desperate I didn’t care. It was a cry for help. I was confronted and I said, ‘Yeah, it was me.’ It was the first honorable, truthful thing that had come out of my mouth in years.”

He was given an ultimatum: Get clean, or the family member would report him to the police and press charges. Although it wasn’t the first time Monteith had taken something that didn’t belong to him (“A lot of things went missing when I was around; I had high overhead to take care of ”), up until that point he had avoided prosecution.

“I was done fighting myself,” Cory recalls of his turning point. “I finally said, ‘I’m gonna start looking at my life and figure out why I’m doing this.’”

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I have some disappointing news for some ‘Glee’ fans! According to creator Ryan Murphy, we’ll soon be saying goodbye to the McKinley High seniors, because they’re graduating and moving on in May 2012!

Speaking on Ryan Seacrest’s radio show on Friday, Murphy said that the upcoming Season 3 will be senior year for the original cast.

“I don’t think of it in terms of eliminating or replacing. Because I think the thing about this cast is people love them and they are incredibly talented. They’ve left sort of an indelible mark,” he said.

“The thing that I wanted to do and the cast wanted to do, we didn’t want to have a show where they were in high school for eight years. We really wanted it to be true to that experience. We thought it would be really cool if we were true to the timeline.”

Murphy revealed that Matthew Morrison and Jane Lynch will stay with the show beyond Season 3, with their characters Will Schuester and Sue Sylvester acting as “the male and female lynchpins of the series.”

The empty spots will be filled by newbies who’ll be seeded into the show throughout next season — casting calls have already gone out for an “Adele-meets-Susan-Boyle” type among others — including the winner of spin-off competition show ‘The Glee Project,’ who’ll get a seven-episode story arc in the fall.

Summing up the revolving door policy at ‘Glee,’ Murphy said “I think the fun thing about the show is it’s a celebration of youth and talent and I think that just like with the original cast, I think finding those young unknown people and giving them an opportunity to break into the business and become stars is a really fun and exciting thing and is the spirit of the series.”

‘Glee’ Season 3 is due to premiere in September on Fox.

I think this is either genius or lunatic. Everyone has fallen in love with Rachel, Quinn, Finn and Puck! How will the public react to them leaving, and bringing on a whole new cast?

How do you feel about that?

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