Thirty years after her very first bow in Les Misérables at the Imperial Theatre, Lea Michele is back in the exact same building — this time headlining a dazzling new revival of Chess. And yes, she’s still ordering the cheeseburger at Joe Allen afterward… when she’s not saving her voice for the show.
From child prodigy to Glee superstar to stepping into Barbra Streisand’s iconic Funny Girl role under intense scrutiny, Michele’s journey has had more plot twists than a musical itself. She’s faced brutal online backlash, a high-risk pregnancy, a heartbreaking miscarriage during her Funny Girl run, and the pressure of rescuing a Broadway show that was sinking fast.
She didn’t just save it — she turned Funny Girl into the hottest ticket in town.
Now, at 39, the mother of two (son Ever, 4, and daughter Emery, born after intense IVF) is starring opposite Aaron Tveit and Nicholas Christopher in Chess — a glittering Cold War love triangle packed with Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus hits (“One Night in Bangkok,” “I Know Him So Well”). Critics are already calling her performance “roof-raising.”
“I wanted to finally show everyone that I could play this part — and play her really well,” Michele says of taking over Funny Girl in 2023. “We all grow. It’s hard when every phase of your life is under a microscope.”
And the little girl who once tugged her mom’s sleeve in the Les Misérables audition hallway and whispered, “I’m gonna get this”? “She’d just say ‘thank you,’” Michele smiles. “That’s still all I want.”
Catch Lea Michele in Chess at the Imperial Theatre — the same stage where her dream began — and see the full-circle moment Broadway can’t stop talking about.
[Watch Lea Michele sing “Someone Else’s Story” from Chess → tap the video below]
A deli owner’s daughter from New Jersey just rewrote her own story — again. ❤️