Naya Rivera, who plays mean girl Santana on the Fox musical-comedy Glee, says she's happy her character is gay.

In an interview with The Los Angeles Times published before the show's season finale, Rivera talked about playing Santana, who recently admitted she's in love with Brittany (played by Heather Morris).

“I didn't know where they were going to take the story line, but I ended up having a lot of fun playing with it,” she said. “I've gotten to show off different sides of who Santana is, and I've gotten an overwhelmingly great response.”

Rivera added that the story line took her by surprise.

“I didn't think it was going to go this far. But I'm glad that it did, because there have been a lot of fans who have expressed that they've been going through similar situations in their lives. I've heard from girls that are in high school, they're 16, 17, and they're like, 'I came out to my mom,' or 'I came out to my friends, and thank you for helping me do that.'”

Brad Falchuk, an executive producer of the show, recently talked about keeping Santana in the closet during the show's second season, which ended on Tuesday.

Coming out is “a big deal,” he said. Then, referring to gay student Kurt Hummel's coming out, he added: “We dedicated two episodes to Kurt coming out and then it went on. We want to give it some time so we're giving it some time and we're going to get into it next season.”