ACTRESS Lea Michele has been performing for over two decades and is most well-known for her role on the hit Fox series Glee.
Producers of the Broadway show Funny Girl announced she will be joining the cast, replacing Beanie Feldstein in the role of Fanny Brice.
Who is Lea Michele?
Lea Michele, 36, was born in the Bronx, New York and at just eight years old, she landed her first role on Broadway in the role of young Cosette in the adapted version of Victor Hugo’s book, Les Miserables.
She went on to star in other productions including Fiddler on the Roof, Ragtime, and Side by Side.
In 2009, Michele took a step back from the stage to star in the role of Rachel Berry on the TV series Glee until 2015.
The role was reportedly written for her, incorporating Michele’s love of Broadway into her character, and earning her a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Television Series Musical or Comedy.
After the show ended, she continued to work with the show’s creator Ryan Murphy and appeared in his next TV show, Scream Queens, alongside the Scream Queen herself, Jamie Lee Curtis.
The role was entirely different from her character in Glee, and Michele said it was something that allowed her to stretch herself as an actor.
“Honestly, having been offered this role, I knew nothing,” the actress told Entertainment Weekly in 2015.
“But I did trust Ryan implicitly that he would create something for me that would be the most incredible opportunity to show people a different side and a different color.
“And the first and only thing he said to me about the project was, ‘neck brace.’ And I was like, ‘Well, I guess no better way to show people something completely different from Rachel Berry than a neck brace.’
“The thing that I’m most grateful for with this character is the opportunity to show people a completely different side.”
What else does Lea Michele do?
Michele started releasing music in February 2014 with her first album, Louder, which featured songs by Sia and Christina Perri.
The album was inspired by the death of her boyfriend, Cory Montieth, who passed away from an accidental overdose.
She wrote the song, If You Say So about Monteith, and told Billboard, “Listening to it, it’s therapeutic and difficult.
“It will always represent the most devastating thing that’s ever happened to me in my whole life. But at the same time, music is therapy. It’s been therapy for me in the entire grieving process and in my entire life.”
She added, “I’m grateful that Sia collaborated on that song with me and it’s a moment in my life … music has just been so important and so helpful to me this whole year.”
Her second album, Places, came out in 2017, making it to the no. 28 spot on Billboard’s Top 200 and provided her the opportunity to introduce her mini-tour, An Intimate Evening with Lea Michele.
Simultaneously, Michele embarked on the path to becoming an author when she wrote Brunette Ambition in 2014. The book is part memoir, part How To as it focuses on fashion, inner strength, and beauty tips, and went on to become a New York Times bestseller.
She published her follow-up book You First: Journal Your Way To Your Best Life a year later to advise young women on how to pursue the best version of themselves.
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What is Lea Michele’s new role on Broadway?
The producers of the Broadway show Funny Girl announced Michele would be stepping into the role of Fanny Brice after Beanie Feldstein takes her final bow on July 31, 2022.
Michele has wanted to pursue a role in Funny Girl since she first announced it in a 2014 interview with Andy Cohen on Watch What Happens Live.
“Ryan [Murphy] has the rights [to the musical], and it’s something that we’d both, I think, would really like to do,” Michele said.
She continued, “… We’ve had some really exciting first meetings with a really fabulous director that we think would be really wonderful.”
Feldstein announced she will no longer be playing the role in an Instagram post on July 11, two months ahead of her original end date for the show.
“Playing Fannie Brice on Broadway has been a lifelong dream of mine, and doing so for the last few months has been a great joy and true honor,” Feldstein wrote.
“Once the production decided to take the show in a different direction, I made the extremely difficult decision to step away sooner than anticipated.
“The people I have had the great joy of bringing Funny Girl to life with every single night, both on and off the stage, are all remarkably talented and exceptional humans and I hope you continue to join them on Henry Street after I depart on July 31st.”
