When Lea Michele returns to Broadway in Chess this fall, it’ll be a full-circle moment for the stage and screen star. The new revival of the cult-fave musical brings her back to the Imperial Theatre — the very same house where Michele made her Broadway debut as a child actor in Les Misérables 30 years ago.
Long before the hit series Glee made her a TV star, Michele was a Broadway baby. Here’s a look back at her stage stints, from Les Mis to Funny Girl — and a look ahead to what you can expect in this fall’s new and improved Chess.
1995: Les Misérables, Imperial Theatre
At age 8, Michele scored her first Broadway gig when the long-running, original Broadway production of Les Misérables held open auditions for child actors in her hometown of Englewood, New Jersey. She was there to accompany a friend, but she surprised her parents by wanting to audition too. “I never sang before,” she told Drew Barrymore in 2022. “It wasn’t so much that I knew or thought I could sing. It was just the idea of doing that in front other people didn’t scare me.”
Before she knew it, she was playing Young Cosette (and singing the iconic tune “Castle on a Cloud”) in Les Misérables, and also understudying the role of the revolutionary orphan Gavroche.
1998: Ragtime, Ford Center for the Performing Arts (now the Lyric Theatre)
After exiting Les Mis, Michele joined the likes of Audra McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell, and Marin Mazzie in the original cast of Lynn Ahrens, Stephen Flaherty, and Terrence McNally’s Ragtime, first in the production’s world premiere in Toronto in 1996 and then on Broadway two years later. She played The Little Girl, the daughter of Jewish immigrant Tateh (portrayed in that cast by Succession’s Peter Friedman), in the sweeping historical tale of American life in the early 20th century.
Michele recalled her experiences in the show in a speech she made at a 2023 benefit concert celebrating the musical’s 25th anniversary. “For me … Ragtime forged a family,” she said. “I was 11 years old when we started the show in Canada, and I was starstruck by the company. … Even at the age of 11, I knew we were about to do something so special — not just for us, but for the world.”
Ragtime, of course, went on to become a modern musical-theater classic. It’ll be back on Broadway this fall with a cast that includes Caissie Levy, Joshua Henry, and Brandon Uranowitz.
2004: Fiddler on the Roof, Minskoff Theatre
After leaving Ragtime in 2000, Michele chose to spend the next three years living the life of an average high schooler (except for the occasional workshop of a new musical called Spring Awakening — more on that shortly). Then, the summer before her senior year, she scored the role of Shprintze, the fourth of Tevye’s five daughters, in the 2004 revival of Fiddler on the Roof, starring Alfred Molina and Randy Graff.
At the time, she had just been accepted to New York University and wasn’t sure acting was something she would continue to pursue professionally. “It was a big deciding point in my life,” she told Broadway World. “Which way is your life going to go? The college route and act a little bit on the side and major in law or something, or are you just going to really give yourself to this?”
She chose acting — and has been working ever since.
2006: Spring Awakening, Eugene O’Neill Theatre
Not long after Fiddler, Michele returned to Broadway in what became her breakout role: Wendla in Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik’s Spring Awakening. She had been involved in the developing project after being cast in an early developmental workshop at 14 years old, and she stuck with the boundary-pushing new musical all the way through its Off-Broadway premiere in 2006 — which was so well received by audiences and critics alike that the show transferred to Broadway later that year.
Along the way, she gave up an opportunity to return to Les Misérables to play Éponine, which had long been her dream role in the show. “It was the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make,” she told Playbill. But after six years with Spring Awakening, she added, “I really felt I had to take it to this next step.”
It proved to be the right move. After a slow start, Spring Awakening — an edgy, explicit story of teenagers in 1890s Germany told with a rock-music score — became the hottest ticket in town and went on to win seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical. Through it all she forged a close and lasting relationship with her costar Jonathan Groff, who remains one of her best friends today.
Her profile-boosting performance in the show put her on Hollywood’s radar — and just a year after she left the production in 2008, she was starring as the talented try-hard Rachel Berry in the era-defining TV hit Glee.
2022: Funny Girl, August Wilson Theatre
With six seasons on Glee and lead roles in other series, including Scream Queens and The Mayor, it was several years before Michele made her Broadway return — and when she did, it was in a legendary 1964 musical with which she was already closely associated. During her time on Glee, the Funny Girl song “Don’t Rain on My Parade” became one of Michele’s signature numbers, and in the show’s fifth season, Rachel leaves high school to pursue an acting career in New York — where she is promptly cast as the lead in Funny Girl. In the years after Glee ended, a real-life Broadway production, in which Michele would play the unstoppable starlet Fanny Brice, was proposed but never materialized.
But Michele finally got the chance to play Fanny in 2022, when she stepped into a Broadway revival that had originally starred Beanie Feldstein. She stayed in the show for a full 12 months. “That was my dream come true,” she said from the stage after her final performance, adding in a heartfelt Instagram post, “Fanny Brice has been a part of my career from the very beginning and no words can describe what it has meant for me to play this role on Broadway and make it my own.”
2025: Chess, Imperial Theatre
This time Michele isn’t staying away from Broadway for long: Starting in October, she’s back in Chess, the 1986 West End musical by ABBA hitmakers Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus. The show was short-lived on Broadway in 1988, but it didn’t take long for the spectacular score to win over a legion of fans.
Chess will mark the third time that Michele has collaborated with director Michael Mayer (after Spring Awakening and Funny Girl). This time she stars with Tony winner Aaron Tveit and Hamilton alum Nicholas Christopher in the story of a Cold War–era chess rivalry between two chess masters, one American and one Russian — and the woman (Michele) torn between them.
This new staging, which originated at the Kennedy Center in 2018, features a new book by Emmy-winning writer Danny Strong. “We’re really excited to take what has been a cult classic show and bring it to this new generation,” Michele told Broadway World on the red carpet at this year’s Tony Awards.
With a score that includes stellar tunes like “Nobody’s Side,” “Someone Else’s Story,” and “Heaven Help My Heart,” the show just might give Michele a signature anthem to rival “Don’t Rain on My Parade.”
