Interview with Lea Michele
Thursday / October 1, 2026
About Lea Michele
Broadway performer from the Bronx who debuted at eight in Les Miserables, originated Wendla in Spring Awakening, played Rachel Berry on Glee and starred in Funny Girl.
Source: Playbill on YouTube
These answers are taken from Lea Michele in Playbill's 'My Life in the Theatre' on Playbill's YouTube channel. You! Backstage did not conduct this interview.
What was your very first experience with singing?
I had never sung in my life before. I had never performed professionally, but there was an open call in my hometown of Tenafly, New Jersey. My dearest friend Chloe was auditioning, and the night before, her father got sick, and her mother asked my mom to take her on the audition. And I said, "Well, I want to go as well and I want to try out." And my mom was like, "You've never sung before. You've never performed." I'd seen three Broadway shows prior, Phantom, Cats and Camelot, and I fell in love with Phantom, and I had the CD at home. So I said, "I'm gonna sing Angel of Music." I went into the open call with no headshot, no music or anything, and I just sang both Christine's and Meg's parts of Angel of Music.
They called me back, and I said to my mom, "I think I'm going to get this." And my mom said, "Things like that don't happen to people like us." But two weeks later, I was performing on Broadway in my first Broadway show.
What drew you to a career as a singer?
After my first performance, I turned to my parents and I said, "I want to do this for the rest of my life. I love this." And they said, "Okay." So now here we are 30 years later, back at the Imperial Theater, which is pretty unbelievable.
I had the most unbelievable time in Les Mis. I remember every single thing. Even now, back in the same theater, the smell, if I close my eyes and I walk on the stage every night, even though we're playing our own incredible score, all I can hear is [Les Mis]. I feel like I could go right back into it and do the show. It's my favorite Broadway musical. It always will be. And it just opened up my heart and my mind and my entire body to this amazing business.
What do you enjoy most about singing?
Don't even get me started on the music. The great Tim Rice, to get to sing his music, and Benny and Björn from ABBA. It is so thrilling as a vocalist to get to go on the roller coaster ride of Chess every night. You go through these twists and turns of the different styles of belting, to legit musical theater, to these amazing pop song moments that we get to have. And it's so fun.
Nick said one time, "The thing about Chess is, if you warm up and you get yourself physically and vocally ready, you just strap yourself in for the ride, and the show takes you on this ride every single night." So no matter what I'm feeling, I just sort of buckle in. I look to my left at Nick and I look to my right at Aaron, and we just kind of hold hands and we dive in together.
What was a great moment for you as a singer?
The best memory of all was somewhere toward the end of the run. I'd been in the show for about nine months, and I looked out into the audience and my husband was there with my son, and my son sat through the entire show. Getting to perform for him, being back in New York with the two people that I love the most sitting right there, playing this part, that was the dream come true right there.
How did your career as a singer unfold?
I had met Ryan Murphy at Spring Awakening. In 2007, Jonathan left Spring Awakening for a few weeks to go shoot a pilot in Los Angeles. The day he left, the stagehands went on strike, so no one was going to the theater. I called him and he was like, get on a plane. I'd never been to California. While he was at work all day, he was like, I'm working on this television show with a guy named Ryan Murphy. Come to dinner with us. I went to the Chateau Marmont, wearing a purple silk dress with ruffles down the front that I bought on Melrose that afternoon, and I met Ryan, and I talked to him all night about Barbra Streisand and Celine Dion.
And apparently after that, he wrote a character called Rachel Berry for me, which I didn't know. When I was out in Los Angeles doing Les Mis, I got a call that there was a television show called Glee coming, and I auditioned for it and I got the part. And Ryan told me I was the only person that he was seeing for the part. I played Rachel Berry for six seasons. I got to sing some of the greatest musical theater songs of all time. We did over 800 musical numbers.
What has been your greatest accomplishment as a singer?
I had wanted to play Fanny Brice for as far back as I could remember watching the movie. I remember what I was eating, what I was wearing, where I was sitting. It was Michael Mayer who told me to watch it, during Spring Awakening, and immediately I was like, I have to play this part. I don't know how. I don't know when, but it will happen. And it did.
I hadn't done a show in so many years. It took a while for the muscle to rebuild, and I didn't have the real time to figure it out. I just kind of jumped out of the plane. I had a baby at home, I was back in New York after being gone for such a long time, and I'd never tap danced on Broadway before. I don't know which one of those three things was the hardest. So I often think to myself, when I feel like I can't do something: okay, well, I've had two children and I've played Fanny Brice, so I think I can do it.
How do you keep communication clear with directors, music directors and the people you perform with?
Ragtime felt harder than Les Mis in a lot of ways. Les Mis was like summer camp, but this was like, okay, now I'm seeing what this feels like as a real responsibility. Especially working side by side with Peter every night. We worked so closely, and I learned from that experience how much every single thing I do affects the person standing next to me.
I remember Audra would come up to me and she would put her hands around my waist and have me expand my diaphragm, teaching me how to breathe properly. Or one day I was peeking through the curtain looking at the audience before the show, and Audra came up behind me and she said, "If you can see them, they can see you." I soaked up every single thing that I watched happen in front of me.
Of all the roles, songs and shows you have done, which is your favorite?
It had been my dream to play Eponine since I was 8 years old. Every night when I was in Les Mis, I would look at the women that would come in and play Eponine and sing On My Own, and I was like, I have to play this part. I was desperate. At one point I was going to get emancipated so that I could go and play Eponine on tour.
There's nothing like getting to sing, first of all, at the Hollywood Bowl, but to sing On My Own at night under the stars. I'm getting chills thinking about it. I would go right now and get on a plane and go do that again. When I tried on the costume for the first time, Eponine's coat and her hat, I wanted to put that on for my entire life. I would literally play Eponine for the rest of my life if I could.
Tell me about a song or a role that was hard to get right. What was it and why was it challenging?
I definitely think that [Anne Frank] is one of the hardest roles I've ever had to play. Rebecca Taichman was my director, and she's so extraordinary. I never left the stage, even during intermission. I was on stage the entire time. And to show Anne's internal nervous energy that she couldn't expel, Rebecca always had me moving some part of my body throughout the entire show, whether it was just my ankle under the desk or my hand. As an actor I learned so much about my craft through this experience.
It was also the first time that I left home and was living somewhere else. And it was really heartbreaking. I lost the majority of my family and ancestors in the Holocaust. The only family member to survive the Holocaust, my uncle Leon, was alive during this production and passed away shortly after. I got to see the numbers on his arm that he had covered up with a tattoo. I dedicated my performance to him and in memory of my whole lineage.
Tell me something I may not know from reading your credits.
The Playbill story is the craziest story of all. I found a photo of me in 1995 from when I was in Les Mis, when I was 8 years old, at the Imperial Theater, and they have all the Playbills of the shows that had been in the theater before. And right behind me was the Playbill for Chess. I walked into the Imperial a few months ago for the first time and I didn't know if that wall had been taken down. And there it was, right there where I stood 30 years earlier.
The last time I felt this alive and free and fearless and present doing a show was 30 years ago, when I was 8 years old, on the same stage. It's taken me a while to come back to that feeling, and I've gone through stages of stage fright or anxiety. But I'm approaching 40, this is my sixth Broadway show, and I've taken everything I've learned in my life and brought it to this experience.
Lea Michele's Full Biography
Lea Michele Sarfati was born in the Bronx, New York to Edith Thomasina (Porcelli), a nurse, and Mark David Sarfati, a delicatessen owner-turned-real estate agent. Her mother is of Italian descent (from Rome and Naples), and her father is of Sephardi Jewish ancestry (from Turkey and Greece). Lea was raised Catholic in Tenafly, New Jersey and graduated from Tenafly High School.
At age eight, Lea went with a friend to an open casting call for an up-and-coming musical. After spontaneously deciding to audition, she was offered the role and, two weeks later, she was starring on Broadway. She made her Broadway debut in 1995 as a replacement for the role of Young Cosette in "Les Misérables". She was then cast in the role of Tateh's daughter, the Little Girl, in the 1998 original Broadway cast of "Ragtime", and in 2004 she portrayed Shprintze and understudied the role of Chava in the Broadway revival of the musical "Fiddler on the Roof".
When she was 14, Lea was given the role of Wendla Bergmann in Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik's musical version of "Spring Awakening". She starred in early workshops, off-Broadway, and finally originated the role in the Broadway production at age 20. Around the same time that the show was set to go to Broadway, Lea was offered the role of Éponine Thénardier in the Broadway revival of "Les Misérables". She chose to remain with "Spring Awakening", which debuted on Broadway in December 2006. She was later nominated for a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Musical. After two years of starring in "Spring Awakening", Lea left the show with co-star Jonathan Groff, to pursue other opportunities.
In late 2008, Lea won the role of Rachel Berry on the comedy-drama series Glee (2009), and since the show's premiere on May 19, 2009, has received worldwide critical acclaim for her performance. She received the 2009 Satellite Award for Best Actress in a Series, Comedy or Musical, and later won three People's Choice Awards and a Screen Actors Guild Award. Along with her award wins, Lea also received Golden Globe and Emmy Award nominations.