Lea Michele

• 1. Introduction

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  Lea Michele Sarfati was eight years old in 1995 when she walked onto a Broadway stage as a replacement Cosette in Les Misérables. By the 2020s she was still there, now as the headliner. In between came a Fox musical series that made her famous. She also released four studio albums and two books, and faced a public reckoning over how she treated colleagues. This documentary asks a few things. Where does the name she performs under come from? What did it take to turn a stage prodigy into the lead voice of a television phenomenon? And how did she win back a Broadway audience that once knew her only as a child?

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• 2. Child Of Broadway

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  At her first audition, a girl from the Bronx introduced herself as Lea Michele. The role on offer was Cosette. She was the only child of Edith Thomasina, a nurse born Porcelli, and Mark David Sarfati, a real estate agent and former delicatessen owner. She dropped her surname because she had been teased about how to pronounce it. For the audition she sang "Angel of Music" from The Phantom of the Opera, the only musical she knew. She had gone along to support a friend, and she walked out with the part.

  Her family history stretched across the Mediterranean. Her mother is Italian American with ancestors from Rome and Naples. Her father is a Sephardic Jew whose family spoke Judaeo-Spanish and came from Thessaloniki, Greece. Most of that city's Jews were killed in the Holocaust, and her great-great-grandmother was among them. Michele grew up in her mother's Catholic faith, and her father, in her words, "gladly" came along to Mass. The family lived in the Bronx until she was 4, then moved to Tenafly, New Jersey. They also rented a Manhattan apartment for the stretches when she worked on Broadway. For elementary school she attended Rockland Country Day School in Congers, New York.

  In 1997 she was homeschooled in Toronto while performing in Ragtime. She played the Little Girl for a year in the original Toronto cast, before the production moved to Broadway. She also understudied Gavroche, and she joined the 1998 original Broadway cast. That year she voiced Christina in the animated film Buster & Chauncey's Silent Night, released on the 13th of October 1998. At Tenafly High School she joined the volleyball and debate teams and sang in choir. Between jobs she worked at a bat mitzvah dress shop and at her father's deli.

  She skipped Broadway auditions through her freshman, sophomore and junior years to focus on school. In the summers of 2000-2001 and 2002 she trained at Stagedoor Manor in the Catskills. There she toured with the troupe Our Time Cabaret and performed in Side by Side by Sondheim and The Who's Tommy. In her last summer she was due to perform in Sweet Charity. Instead she booked the role of Wendla Bergmann in a workshop of Spring Awakening, and she had to drop out. New York University's Tisch School of the Arts accepted her, but she chose professional theater. When she was 19, her mother was diagnosed with uterine cancer and treated at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

  In 2004 she played Shprintze in the Broadway revival of Fiddler on the Roof, understudied Chava, and sang on the cast recording. Spring Awakening, a musical by Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik, followed. She sang Wendla at Lincoln Center in February 2005. She then originated the role on Broadway at 20, in a production that opened in December 2006. The Broadway revival of Les Misérables offered her Éponine Thénardier around that time, and she turned it down to stay with Spring Awakening. Her performance earned a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Actress in a Musical.

  In May 2008 she and co-star Jonathan Groff left the Broadway cast. That August she finally sang Éponine at the Hollywood Bowl, opposite Brian Stokes Mitchell as Javert and John Lloyd Young as Marius. Both men would later guest-star on Glee.

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• 3. Rachel Berry

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  Ryan Murphy, a co-creator of Glee, wrote the part of Rachel Berry with Michele specifically in mind. The Fox musical comedy-drama ran from 2009 until 2015, and Rachel was its female lead and star singer. The role brought a 2009 Satellite Award for Best Actress in a television musical or comedy. It also brought Golden Globe nominations in 2009 and 2011 and a Primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series in 2010. As part of the ensemble, she won a Screen Actors Guild Award in 2010, one of four consecutive nominations. In 2012 and 2013 viewers voted her the People's Choice Award for Favorite TV Comedy Actress.

  The attention spilled well beyond television. Time put her on its 2010 list of the 100 most influential people in the world. In December 2010 Billboard gave her its first-ever Triple Threat Award. Her cover of "Gives You Hell," a song by The All-American Rejects, reached the top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100. As of 2010 she was the lead singer on 14 of the 20 best-selling Glee cast songs. The 2011 Grammy nominations brought two nods, for "Don't Stop Believin'" and for the album Glee: The Music, Volume 1.

  Her calendar filled with live events. In October 2010 she and co-star Matthew Morrison played Janet Weiss and Brad Majors. The occasion was a 35th anniversary benefit concert for The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Jack Nicholson and Danny DeVito also starred, and the money went to The Painted Turtle summer camp in Lake Hughes, California. In February 2011 she sang "My Man" at the Grammys' MusiCares tribute to Barbra Streisand. On the 6th of February 2011, before Super Bowl XLV, she performed "America the Beautiful" with the United States Air Force group Tops In Blue.

  The cast also went on the road. The May 2010 tour played 10 shows in Phoenix, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York City. The last show of the year was at Radio City Music Hall. Groff, who played her love interest Jesse St. James on the series, joined her in Los Angeles and New York. The cast stayed in character on stage. In 2011 the tour grew to 22 shows across North America plus nine in England and Ireland, and reviews were positive.

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• 4. Records And Books

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  On the 27th of November 2013, "Cannonball" was announced as the first single from Michele's debut album. She had signed to Columbia Records in 2012, and recording began on the 19th of October of that year. She called the process "pretty slow" and said she wanted a "pop/rock driven" sound rather than a Broadway one. The single arrived on the 10th of December 2013 and entered the Billboard Hot 100 at No. 75. That made her the first main Glee cast member to chart as a lead soloist. It sold over 51,000 copies in its first week. The album Louder followed on the 28th of February 2014 and debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard 200 with over 62,000 copies sold.

  Critics split on what her voice meant for pop. She is a soprano, and as of 2013 her range was reported at roughly three octaves. Rolling Stone's Christopher Weingarten thought it was "a little too perfect" for the pop charts. The Boston Globe called it a "mighty soprano." It said her vocals sit best when she "straddles the line between Katy Perry and Celine Dion." Reviewing the Glee tour, Hanh Nguyen of Zap2it wrote that her live voice was "the real deal." Billboard later praised her performance of "Love Is Alive" on The Late Late Show with James Corden.

  Her second album took a different turn. She began recording Places in April 2015 and described it as less pop and more theatrical. "Love Is Alive" came out on the 3rd of March 2017, and Places was released on the 28th of April 2017. It debuted at No. 28 on the Billboard 200 with over 16,000 units sold. In 2018 she co-headlined the LM/DC Tour with Glee co-star Darren Criss. North American dates fell in May and June. Shows in the United Kingdom and Ireland ran from October to December. Her third album, Christmas in the City, arrived on the 25th of October 2019. Her fourth, Forever: A Lullaby Album, followed on the 5th of November 2021.

  She wrote as well. In May 2013 she signed a deal with Harmony Books and Random House for a part memoir, part how-to book. Brunette Ambition was published on the 20th of May 2014. A week later it was No. 9 on the nonfiction best seller list, and it entered The New York Times list at No. 3. A signing and Q&A event for the book was hosted by Jonathan Groff. A journaling guide, You First: Journal Your Way to Your Best Life, came out from Random House on the 22nd of September 2015.

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• 5. Screens After Glee

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  Her feature film debut came on the 9th of December 2011, when Garry Marshall's New Year's Eve opened worldwide. She played Elise, a back-up singer and the love interest of Ashton Kutcher's character. In 2014 she voiced Dorothy Gale in the animated musical Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return. It opened in North American theaters on the 9th of May.

  Television took her in darker directions. She guest-starred in the final season of FX's Sons of Anarchy as Gertie, a truck stop waitress. Gertie bonds with Gemma Teller Morrow, played by Katey Sagal. Her episode, "Smoke 'em If You Got 'em," aired on the 14th of October 2014. From 2015 to 2016 she played Hester Ulrich in Scream Queens, a Fox horror-comedy with Jamie Lee Curtis, the original scream queen. Hester wore a neck brace and had a quirky streak. The role earned a People's Choice nomination for Favorite Actress in a New TV Series. It also earned two Teen Choice nominations, for Choice TV Actress: Comedy and Choice TV: Villain.

  On the 4th of April 2017 she appeared as Amanda in the first episode of Dimension 404. The Hulu science fiction anthology also starred Robert Buckley and Joel McHale. She then played political advisor Valentina Barella in the ABC sitcom The Mayor. Jeremy Bronson created it and Daveed Diggs was an executive producer. She starred opposite Brandon Micheal Hall and Yvette Nicole Brown. In May 2019 she was announced as host of Well, Well, Well with Lea Michele, a health and wellness series for the Ellen DeGeneres Network. She also led the ABC film Same Time, Next Christmas.

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• 6. Brands, Causes And Home

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  The Gap campaign of 2007 put Michele and her Spring Awakening co-stars on magazine pages and on billboards in Times Square. After Glee, the offers multiplied. In 2010 she became a spokesmodel for Dove and sang "My Favorite Things" in its television commercials. In 2011 she joined most of her Glee co-stars in a Chevrolet commercial for Super Bowl XLV. She sang "See the USA in Your Chevrolet" as Rachel Berry. She fronted Nike's Training Club app that year, and she appeared in commercials for the Hewlett-Packard TouchPad. In January 2012 Candie's named her its spokesmodel, taking over from Vanessa Hudgens. That September she reportedly signed an estimated $1 million deal with L'Oréal Paris.

  Her charity work ran in parallel. She performed for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and joined events such as Broadway Barks and Broadway Bares. In 2008 she appeared in a PETA campaign against horse-drawn carriage rides, and in 2010 she filmed a PETA announcement against fur. She sang at a Human Rights Campaign dinner in November 2009. Since December 2012 she has been an ambassador for L'Oréal's Women of Worth program. In 2014 she teamed with Evian to encourage women to do their own breast exams. In 2016 she worked with Burt's Bees on a campaign about declining bee populations. She sang on "This Is for My Girls," a charity single written by Diane Warren that was released on the 15th of March 2016. It supported the #62MillionGirls campaign and Michelle Obama's Let Girls Learn initiative. In October 2023 she signed the "No Hostage Left Behind" letter, which asked President Joe Biden to secure the release of hostages taken by Hamas.

  Her private life drew as much interest as her work. She wrote in Brunette Ambition that she had dated Glee co-star Matthew Morrison. In 2008 she began working with Cory Monteith, who played her love interest on the show. The media reported in February 2012 that the two were dating, and they stayed together until his death in July 2013. She married the businessman Zandy Reich on the 9th of March 2019 in Napa, California. They have a son, born in August 2020, and a daughter, born in August 2024. In September 2019 she revealed that she has polycystic ovary syndrome. Doctors had diagnosed it around age 30, after symptoms such as weight gain and acne that began at the end of Glee.

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• 7. Reckoning And Rumors

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  In June 2020, actress Samantha Marie Ware accused Michele of bullying her and of causing "traumatic microaggressions" on the set of Glee's sixth season. Ware was responding directly to a social media post by Michele. It began, "George Floyd did not deserve this." Former co-stars Heather Morris, Alex Newell and Amber Riley agreed that Michele had been hostile and rude on set. Riley and Morris rejected the suggestion that her behavior was racist. Michele apologized. She said the responses from cast members had shown her something. Her treatment of everyone in those years was "insensitive or inappropriate." It was a sign of "immaturity." She had been "unnecessarily difficult" and would "keep working to better herself."

  The fallout reached her business life too. HelloFresh, the meal kit company, announced that it was ending its partnership with her on the 2nd of June 2020, over the bullying accusations.

  A separate rumor had been circulating since 2017. It claimed that Michele could not read. It began on the podcast One More Thing, where Jaye Hunt and Robert Ackerman discussed a scene in Naya Rivera's memoir Sorry Not Sorry. In that scene Michele refused to improvise scenes with Tim Conway. The joke became an internet meme in March 2018 and again in 2022. In 2025 she answered it on Jake Shane's podcast. She mentioned her school debate team and then read Shane's notecards aloud to prove the point.

  In September 2022 she had already answered in an interview with The New York Times. "I went to Glee every single day; I knew my lines every single day, and then there's a rumor online that I can't read or write?" she said. She added, "I think often if I were a man, a lot of this wouldn't be the case."

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• 8. Streisand And Funny Girl

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  Barbra Streisand was the person Michele most often called her "role model." Her mother, Edith, played Streisand's films for her as a child. Michele gave Streisand a chapter in Brunette Ambition. She wrote that Streisand built her career by focusing on "what makes her unique and what makes her special." Natalie Wood was another idol, because the young Michele watched West Side Story and wanted to play Maria. Audra McDonald taught her how to warm up, how to breathe and how to care for her voice. She told The Fresno Bee that "80 percent of my singing knowledge came from Audra." Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill was the first album she ever bought, and Celine Dion shaped her singing as well.

  That devotion to Streisand's signature musical ran through Glee. Rachel Berry's obsession with Funny Girl was written into the show partly because of Michele's own interest. That began when she saw the film in 2007. Rachel's storyline included landing the lead in the musical's first Broadway revival. On the 11th of July 2022, the real-life version was announced. Michele took over as Fanny Brice on the 6th of September 2022. She replaced Beanie Feldstein, who had announced she would leave two months earlier than planned. Ramin Karimloo played Nick Arnstein opposite her. She was scheduled for seven shows a week, excluding Thursday evenings.

  Four days into the run she announced a positive COVID-19 test and went into isolation. She returned on the 20th of September 2022. On opening night she received seven standing ovations. Vulture's Jackson McHenry wrote that she "makes it through with blood on the sand." Jesse Green of The New York Times had given the show a poor review when Feldstein led it. After seeing Michele, he wrote that she was "Both vulnerable and invulnerable, kooky and ardent." He still found Michael Mayer's production "garish and pushy." The show closed on the 3rd of September 2023, and Time named her one of the world's 100 most influential people that year.

  In May 2025 she was cast as Florence Vassy in the Broadway revival of Chess, opposite Aaron Tveit and Nicholas Christopher. Performances at the Imperial Theatre began on the 15th of October 2025, and her run is set to end on the 21st of June 2026. The role earned her a Drama League Award nomination.

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