In 1965, the original musical “Funny Girl” was playing at Broadway’s Winter Garden Theatre, starring someone who knew her way around a song. That same year, a guy named Joe Allen opened a place a few blocks away. It was the place to be for Broadway stars like Al Pacino and a host of others. Plus, they served a mean cheeseburger.
The cheeseburgers are still there, and so are Broadway’s elite. Lea Michele has been coming here since her Broadway debut in the 1990s. “I just love this place so much,” she said.
And what would she eat? “A burger. I mean, it’s always so good, so good here, oh my God,” she said.
But when we met her at Joe Allen’s, she wasn’t in a burger mood, because she had a show to do. Lea Michele is currently starring in the musical “Chess.” In the show, she plays a brilliant strategist for two world champion chess players (played by Aaron Tveit and Nicholas Christopher).
“Chess: The Musical”
“Chess” is a love triangle, a spectacle, and a chance for the stars to raise the roof at the Imperial Theatre – the same place where Michele made her Broadway debut in 1995 in “Les Miserables,” at the age of eight.
Her parents weren’t show biz people – Dad owned a deli – and before she auditioned, they had no clue their daughter could sing. “And as we were leaving, I turned to my Mom and I was like, ‘I’m gonna get this. I think I’m gonna get this,'” Michele recalled. “And she said, ‘Things like that don’t happen to people like us.'”
In this case, Mom was wrong: Michele got the part, and went on to even greater heights in the musical “Spring Awakening,” and later became a household name in the hit TV show “Glee.”
She hit a few bumps along the way, among them a difficult pregnancy with her first child in 2020, and flak on social media that she acted like a diva back in the “Glee” days. But things looked up in 2023, when she was asked to step into the shoes of her idol Barbra Streisand, and take over a struggling revival of “Funny Girl.”
She said, “I think that we all grow as we get older. It’s hard being in an industry where there is such a spotlight on these phases and times in your life.”
And what was the pressure like to take over “Funny Girl”? It was the first time that I was really sort of in the spotlight after everything that had happened to me personally,” Michele said. “I wanted to finally show everyone that I could play this part, and play her really well.”
Theo Wargo/Getty Images 
Long story short, Michele killed it, and turned a sinking show into a hit, despite suffering a miscarriage during her run. And when she was approached about doing “Chess,” she told producers that having another baby came first. “And so my husband and I ended up doing IVF, which was in its own right very intense and challenging,” she said. “But you know, we got pregnant and had our daughter, who is wonderful and wild. And then they, you know, said, ‘Would you like to do the show?’ ‘Absolutely!'”
Now, the 39-year-old mother of two is back at the Imperial Theatre, where it all began, serving up another knockout performance with a side of gratitude.
I asked, “What do you think that eight-year-old girl would think, back in that same theatre?”
“I think that she’d be so proud, and she would just say, ‘Thank you,’ ’cause that’s all she wanted,” Michele said. “And it’s still what I want. My love for what I do was definitely reignited during ‘Funny Girl.’ And I’m very grateful for that. But I’m so happy to be here, and to be home.”
To hear Lea Michele perform “Someone Else’s Story,” from “Chess: The Musical,” click on the video player below:
WEB EXCLUSIVE: Watch an extended interview with Lea Michele (Video)
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Story produced by John D’Amelio. Editor: Steven Tyler.
