Lea Michele on Her Concert Tour & Broadway Career

I'm so thrilled to see you. Hi. Welcome to So and So's. Have you been here before? This is so cute. I saw some clips of my dear friend Jonathan Groff performing here, so I obviously had to come and be here myself. It's kind of like the Glee Club because Darren and Chris also did, but he opened it. He was at the opening here. It's kind of like this is where the Glee kids hang out. Then I think we need to do a Glee reboot and have myself, Darren, and Jonathan. This is where we work now in New York. Rachel, Blaine, and Jesse St. James at So and So's. You can't just throw these great ideas out like that. I mean, I'm, you know, putting it out there. Putting it out there. Do it in your spare time. Yeah, right. Exactly. How are you? I haven't seen you since you were in Funny Girl, which was such a... Which is so crazy because it'll have been two years. I know. I don't remember any of the words. To the show? I swear to God. I'm practicing for my tour right now. I was practicing Sadie Sadie last night. I was like, what do I say? Everyone in the audience knows every word. Right. Thankfully, I have the greatest fans who come to these shows. I always eye the one person that knows every word. I'm like, you're going to be my best friend tonight. You're going to help me. It's wild. I think just because the process of finding out that I was going to do the show, like it all happened so fast. And I learned everything so fast. I also think that people had this conception or misconception that I knew every word to everything in Funny Girl, which I did some of the songs, but I'd never sung, you know, music that makes me dance or Sadie Sadie, a lot of the material. And I had to learn it. And I just learned it quickly. And then I left the show and it was like, you know, I had a baby and got pregnant. And so obviously there's been other things on my on my mind. But yeah, I think for this tour right now, I'm like, OK, I have to brush up on my funny girl. You were like Newsflash. I'm not Rachel Berry. You guys like you don't know every single moment of Funny Girl by heart. Exactly. Yes. I've had to do that quite often in my life is remind everyone that I am not Rachel Berry, but I do have some Rachel tendencies. I'm excited. I should have been wearing these socks today. This has been a perfect Rachel outfit. I'm excited to talk about your tour, but I just want to ask you one more thing about Funny Girl. That was such a an amazing moment for you. I don't know if I should use the word comeback, but it felt like, you know, Norma Desmond would prefer a return. But it felt like a great Broadway comeback for you after this amazing time doing Glee and all the things that happened to you since Spring Awakening. Yeah. How do you look back on it? Just what was the whole what was that period like for you experiencing it now that you have some distance from it? Wow. I mean, it was an incredible comeback return to Broadway, to this community. April marks 30 years this month. April marks 30 years that I've been working on Broadway. I made my debut at the Imperial Theatre in Les Mis when I was eight years old. She started young. Yeah. And it's just wild to, you know, look, I wanted to very clearly I wanted to play Fanny Bryce for a really long time. And I was told, OK, at one point I was going to do it. And then at one point I was not going to do it. And I really had come to peace with the fact that it just wasn't going to be a part of my journey. And then when it was brought to me, it just felt like it came at the exact time that it was supposed to in the way that it was supposed to. And I felt truly ready. I think that there was also something about the world and the universe waiting for me to become a mother and be married before I played Fanny, which I didn't understand until I played that role every night. And I really understood it wasn't until becoming a mother and being married that I could understand this true, true pull in my heart of the. Yeah, the pull between wanting to work and being a performer and the love for that, but also the real love of wanting love and family. And once I understood that, that's really what I took and brought to this role every single night. And so, yeah, I think it happened in the way that it was supposed to. And it was incredible. I mean, the first six months are a complete blur. I don't remember. It was like an adrenaline rush. I don't remember my opening night. I just I have links of, you know, the memory. And and then, you know, I think after that, the adrenaline went away and I started to feel how hard it was and the maintenance of something I hadn't done in a really long time and making sure. And it was a ton of pressure. I had incredible support from the cast and from everyone there. And, you know, my last night of the show, I just it was the greatest accomplishment other than being a mother is the greatest accomplishment of my whole life. And I don't know how I did it. It is it was so incredibly hard. And, you know, to wake up every morning and take my son to school and be a mom all day long and then come and play one is, you know, the hardest, one of the hardest female roles on Broadway. I give myself a lot of credit, but it was an incredible experience. Thrilled and honored to have been welcomed so wonderfully back into the Broadway community. And I'm back now and I'm just so happy to be here. Well, you're still playing Fanny Brise because I listen to the album all the time. It's incredible. So good. Maybe you can help me with my lyrics. You'll come. I'll put you in the front row. I'm going to I'm going to be a groupie. I'm going to go on tour with Michelle. So tell me what tell me about this. You're doing a fun tour. Yeah. Kicking off summer tour. Yes. I love going on tour. I've toured by myself before. I was on a tour with Darren Criss for a while where we go off together and do a bunch of shows. But I really love it. I think for me, it's important to do this as a singer to just make sure that I'm constantly working on my voice and my craft and singing different songs and engaging with, you know, my fan base or people who've never come to see me perform before. I really love it. And I find that when I haven't sung for a while and when I haven't performed, I start to get really nervous and I feel like I'm like, can I sing still? I know how to do this. So once I start to feel that way, I know it's time for me to get back out there. And I performed at Carnegie Hall when I left Funny Girl and I did my first solo show there, which was an insane dream come true. I've seen all of my idols perform there, and that was unbelievable. And so the show that I prepared for Carnegie Hall, I'm also now taking on the road. And it's a little bit of a journey through my life, through music, starting with Les Mis, and then going all the way through my Broadway shows and songs from Glee, songs from my album. And it's also like, if you want to get to know me, come see a show. I tell really personal stories. I love engaging with the audience. I'm going to do a little section in the show this time around where I've been thinking a lot about Glee. It's been off the air now. I mean, it must be for almost like, how many years now? 10 years it's been off the air. And yeah, I've just been thinking about it a lot. And I'm like, well, what would it be like now? And what would Rachel Berry be singing now? So I'm doing a whole little section of, you know, what would Rachel do now? So songs that are currently on the radio, which I think will be fun. That's awesome. But now you are a mom. Two kids. I love your kids' names, by the way. What are their names? Ever is my son, and Emery is my daughter. So will they be hitting the road at all with you? Yeah. I mean, touring is really, really awesome. And I loved touring with Darren. I loved, and I hope that we get to take our tour back on the road soon because Darren is so fun. He's like, never nervous. He wants to do something different every single night. And I'm not that way. I'm very nervous. It has to be everything the exact same all the time. But Darren, really, I don't want to give him so much credit right now. But he, I really learned so much from him and it helped me to get rid of a lot of my stage fright. And so, but the point is, is that the tours can be really lonely when you're alone. And so I'm going to try to bring my family with me here and there and have some company. And I'm excited about that. Have they seen you sing a lot? I mean, My son came to see Funny Girl. Okay. Young. He sat through Funny Girl, two and a half. Yeah. How much did he take in? What he thought was that it was just mommy on the stage singing songs. And so he was, you know, engaged in watching me perform and he was really well behaved. And then I tell everyone the story of, you know, a couple of weeks later, he came to pick me up from work and he said to my husband, we're just going to go pick up mommy, right? Because that show's really long. And I was like, it is. How he sat through that second act. It's a long second act. So the concert might be more, a better experience. Yeah. I don't know if he'll, it'll, it's like going to be at, he came to a matinee, Funny Girl. So the concerts will be at like eight o'clock. So. Oh, right. Yeah. He doesn't need to stay up to watch me sing. What is it like? I mean, it's fun. And of course, Jonathan Groff, your bestie. And we, I mean, we all get so much pleasure out of watching your ongoing friendship slash love relationship. I mean, it's so, I mean, it's so great. It's what keeps social media alive. But he's back on Broadway and Darren's on Broadway. I know, I've got my boys here. I saw Maybe Happy Ending and it was so beautiful. It was so gorgeous. Darren was absolutely incredible. Loved the show. And I have seen, you know, lots of workshops of just in time and really have been along with Jonathan on this eight year journey that it has taken him to play Bobby Darren. And I left him a video on Monday morning and I was like, you are going to go, I mean, I could cry. I'm so excited for him, what he has done to get the rights to this show, put it together, work on it. And the fact that he's going back to back, ending a show and then going right into another show, it's, it's unbelievable. So, so excited for him. He just turned 40. I know you guys were talking about it. I threw him a surprise party at my house with some friends and Dan and Lindsay came and it was really sweet. And we got to celebrate him before he went to tech that day. So I just love him. So obviously the clock's ticking. It's time to get Lea Michele back to Broadway. Yeah. I mean, I'm, look, when my husband and I moved back here in 2021, I think we came back from LA after being in LA for 15 years. And I was just, you know, really unsure of like, what was it going to be like being in New York and after being gone for so long. And once I did Funny Girl, I was like, I'm just so happy to be back and really just hoping that I have the honor to do Broadway for the rest of my life to continue on this 30 year journey. Yeah. Broadway's buzzing. So I hope it's, I hope that you're coming back soon. I hope so too. I really do. I just have to make sure that they give me my brain back after having a child. They take it from you and they hold it for a while and then they hand it back. So as soon as they hand it back to me, I'll be ready to go. 30 years though. You're such a Broadway baby. I mean, it's just going, it's just kind of how you want to see the rest of your career go. I mean, for sure. I mean, there's no, look to, to show your craft, uh, to have the honor of being on Broadway. It's the, it's the greatest gift in the world. I've had the honor of working with some of the most extraordinary people on the stage and learned from so many people along the way. And I think Funny Girl was the, was an unbelievable learning experience for me to be an adult, you know, in the theater and take everything that I'd learned, um, over the years and then come and apply that. It was an experience unlike what I'd ever had before. So I feel like I want to just continue to take from the things that I learned and apply them and, you know, have different experiences and do different types of shows. I also feel that I got to play Fanny finally and there's a, like a relief. I just felt like I had to do that so badly that now I'm excited to dream some new dreams and look outside of the box that, you know, cause I just felt like I couldn't do anything until I did that. So now I'm like, okay, well, what, what should you know? What could it be? And exploring and playing. And, um, that's, that's very exciting to me as well. I can't wait to see what it is. Thank you. So good to see you.