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glee_fans2010-05-11 12:26 am
coverallthebasses) wrote in glee_fans2010-05-11 12:26 am
Lea in USA Today
I love Lea. I don't even care about the Lea haters.
Michele, one of the breakout stars of Fox's musical comedy Glee, is a tiny, petite wisp who speaks in soft, dulcet tones. But in person, she's formidable.
"I always knew what I wanted to do," says Michele, 23. And that was being on stage.
As a kid growing up in New Jersey, Michele began auditioning for and booking theater gigs, appearing in Broadway productions of Les Miserables, Ragtime and Fiddler on the Roof. It was her turn in the December 2006 hit musical Spring Awakening that earned her a Tony nomination and led her to Glee.
The series showcases Michele's acting, dancing and singing talents, has garnered her a Golden Globe nomination and launched her as TV's newest triple threat. And a seemingly unfazed and tireless Michele, who starts Glee's national concert tour on Saturday, is taking it all in without missing a beat.
Has it sunk in yet that she's on the hottest show on TV, or on the list of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world for, as assistant managing editor Radhika Jones says, being "such a talented person with so much room to grow and explore"? Well, yes and no, Michele says.
"We've been doing this for a really long time and we're constantly in work mode. Every now and then, I have blissful moments of thanking God for all the amazing things that are happening," she says. "When I leave the White House after just meeting Obama or when I see my face on the cover of Rolling Stone or when I meet someone who tells me that their daughter is inspired by me, those are moments that are incredibly joyful."
Michele's best friend, Jonathan Groff, who also plays her love interest on Glee, says she's the defnition "of the strong, young, powerful, gifted woman."
"She knows who she is. For someone who's only 23, it blows my mind that she's able to handle it as well as she does and not let it get to her," he says.
Embracing the weirdo
On the smash show (airing Tuesdays at 9 p.m.), she's Rachel Berry, an often insufferable high school diva in the making, a geeky yet absurdly confident girl who gravitates to the stage like Carrie Bradshaw to a shoe department. Michele sees parts of herself in the character.
"Rachel is very much like me when I was about 10 to 12, working in theater, very driven. When I was in high school, although I wasn't like Rachel, I understand her. I was similar in the sense that I didn't conform to what people thought was cool. It was important to do what I believed in," Michele says.
That focus on her goal enabled her to have self-assurance at an age when most of her peers were grappling with insecurity and a need to conform.
"I knew what I wanted to do and what I wanted to be, and I kept that in my head at all times. I'd been working since I was 8. I saw the real world when I was 8, and I knew (my school) Tenafly High School was not the real world. It was OK to be different shapes, sizes, whatever," Michele says.
It was her theater work that landed her at fictional William McKinley High School. Michele met Glee creator Ryan Murphy (the brains behind Nip/Tuck) while starring in Spring Awakening, and Glee was the first audition she had upon heading to Los Angeles.
"It was written for her. We had the prototype, which was a Reese Witherspoon Election-esque Broadway baby that was a mix of Barbra Streisand and Patti LuPone," Murphy says. "I really believed in Lea's talent because her talent was once in a lifetime."
As Rachel, Michele gets plenty of humiliation on the small screen. Last week, she was ranked last on the Glist, which measures the hotness and sexual prowess of the glee club members. Students have thrown drinks in her face and made comments made about her nose. Bring it on, says Michele, who works with the show's costume designer to put together Rachel's knee-socks-and-miniskirt ensembles and can relate to Rachel's status as a weirdo.
"I am an unconventional beauty. I grew up in a high school where if you didn't have a nose job and money and if you weren't thin, you weren't cool, popular, beautiful. I was always told that I wasn't pretty enough to be on television. I was never pretty enough to be the pretty girl and I was never quirky enough to be the quirky girl," she says. "Boys didn't look at me in high school and think I was the pretty girl. So I get Rachel. Of course, she's gorgeous."
Being on the show, Michele says, "has taught me that about myself. It really praises your differences, and it's helped me embrace mine." It also has landed Michele her first beauty campaign: a commercial for Dove hair care.
In person, Michele exudes confidence in herself and her attributes. And "she has a lot of belief in her talent," Murphy says.
She doesn't downplay her vocal gifts, or the inherent talent that allowed her to break into Broadway while her friends were playing with Barbies. At awards shows, she wears Oscar de la Renta and Herve Leger frocks.
But when she was first in Hollywood and trying to break into TV, Murphy says, "she was worried if she would find her way. She's not blond and anorexic. I love that she's gone from Rachel Berry to a red carpet darling and arguably the young actress that every designer is dying to dress. Her beauty is her own, just like Barbra Streisand's beauty was her own."
Where that beauty and talent will take her is still in question. For now, Michele is focused on Glee, which takes up the majority of her time. But she'd love to segue into films and looks up to "Amy Adams and Julia Roberts" and "the pinnacle of it all, Meryl Streep." She wants to continue finding "really amazing roles. I'd love to do a bunch of movies. I'd love to go back to theater."
Thanks to Glee, Michele says, she's booked. "But I think it's good I'm still able to play very young right now. When there is a time for me to come back to theater, I'm hoping people will see me as playing that lead role," she says. "I've gotten to do so much up to now. There's no rush. If there was a rush, you'd see me trying to do a revival of Evita in the month of June (during Glee's production break). But there's no rush, so that's not happening."
Murphy has no doubt that Michele will achieve her goals. "She's very ambitious and driven, and she's got her eye on the prize. She's always been focused," he says. "Talking to her mother, she's been that way from birth. She's an only child and you can tell."
She's matter-of-fact about the amount of work she has to put into the show. Michele, like the other leads, works 12 to 14 hours a day, starting at 6 a.m. most days to get into hair and makeup. When she's not shooting a scene, she's rehearsing choreography in the dance studio. And on top of that, she and the rest of the cast have been learning production numbers for Glee's national tour, which goes through the end of May.
Always 'on'
No matter what, Michele always arrives prepared.
"She always has everything down before she comes to set, her lines and her songs. She's a perfectionist in every way. She walks around with her notebook and makes her to-do lists," says her castmate and close friend Jenna Ushkowitz.
Landing the show meant moving to the West Coast, which "was a very uncomfortable transition at first," Michele says. "My roots are in New York. I tried to create a new life (in Los Angeles), but then I realized that my life was in New York. So Los Angeles is my work base. I'm very comfortable out there and have a safe group of people that I trust. And then I come home. This is where I breathe. I work, work, work out there and then I come here. I see shows and hang out with my family and I recharge. And there I go full-throttle."
Her focus extends to her off-screen behavior. Michele speaks crisply, answering every question with focus and purpose. There's no idle chatter, no banter. When she's on, she's on, and you get the sense that she only lets her guard down in front of the few people who are part of her inner circle.
"She keeps her few people close to her, close to her," Groff says.
When she's in interview mode, Michele will tell you firmly about her work with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals to promote spaying and neutering, and her opposition to carriage horses in Central Park. She'll explain thoroughly about how she became a vegan two years ago and might today eat fish once in a great while when she really needs protein. And she's very clear about being a role model to Glee's multitudes of young fans.
"I don't feel pressured. I'm still a human being, and I think people need to understand that. I never did drugs. I wasn't that girl. I don't go out to clubs. You'll never see me on a table at a bar, jumping up and down," she says.
Work and home
If Michele has a wild side, she's not showing it.
"She lives a very quiet life. She doesn't party," says Groff. "She doesn't go out. When we're done with work, we rent a movie. Her life is very simple, and she likes it that way. It's her choice."
She won't divulge details about her long-distance romance with her boyfriend, Theo Stockman, who is starring in American Idiot on Broadway. "I get to hang out with everybody," she sums up about why she values coming back to her home base of Manhattan as much as she can during breaks from the show.
Yet when she's around her close friends, like Groff, "she's very silly and she doesn't take herself too seriously. She loves to laugh and to make jokes, and I'm telling you, I've never laughed harder than with her. She's a trip. One day on set, we were seeing who could do a better impression of her cats. I think I won," Groff says.
Even when she's hanging out with Groff, they're hardly burning up Hollywood's club scene.
"We love working out together. We do yoga at home together. We go on hikes together. We go to the gym together. I hang out with my cast a lot," says Michele. "Everyone comes over to my house, and we like to do stuff together as much as we can. But when it's real free time, three days or whatever, I'm in New York."
Her favorite way to relax after a tough day at work?
"I'll go and get the most delicious vegan food I can find, generally from Real Food Daily. I get kale, black beans, brown rice and tofu, with lime cilantro dressing and hot sauce. I'll pour myself a glass of organic wine. I'll watch the crappiest reality television, maybe take a bath or a shower, give myself a nice little face mask and go to bed," she says.
How very, well, Rachel of her.
Michele, one of the breakout stars of Fox's musical comedy Glee, is a tiny, petite wisp who speaks in soft, dulcet tones. But in person, she's formidable.
"I always knew what I wanted to do," says Michele, 23. And that was being on stage.
As a kid growing up in New Jersey, Michele began auditioning for and booking theater gigs, appearing in Broadway productions of Les Miserables, Ragtime and Fiddler on the Roof. It was her turn in the December 2006 hit musical Spring Awakening that earned her a Tony nomination and led her to Glee.
The series showcases Michele's acting, dancing and singing talents, has garnered her a Golden Globe nomination and launched her as TV's newest triple threat. And a seemingly unfazed and tireless Michele, who starts Glee's national concert tour on Saturday, is taking it all in without missing a beat.
Has it sunk in yet that she's on the hottest show on TV, or on the list of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world for, as assistant managing editor Radhika Jones says, being "such a talented person with so much room to grow and explore"? Well, yes and no, Michele says.
"We've been doing this for a really long time and we're constantly in work mode. Every now and then, I have blissful moments of thanking God for all the amazing things that are happening," she says. "When I leave the White House after just meeting Obama or when I see my face on the cover of Rolling Stone or when I meet someone who tells me that their daughter is inspired by me, those are moments that are incredibly joyful."
Michele's best friend, Jonathan Groff, who also plays her love interest on Glee, says she's the defnition "of the strong, young, powerful, gifted woman."
"She knows who she is. For someone who's only 23, it blows my mind that she's able to handle it as well as she does and not let it get to her," he says.
Embracing the weirdo
On the smash show (airing Tuesdays at 9 p.m.), she's Rachel Berry, an often insufferable high school diva in the making, a geeky yet absurdly confident girl who gravitates to the stage like Carrie Bradshaw to a shoe department. Michele sees parts of herself in the character.
"Rachel is very much like me when I was about 10 to 12, working in theater, very driven. When I was in high school, although I wasn't like Rachel, I understand her. I was similar in the sense that I didn't conform to what people thought was cool. It was important to do what I believed in," Michele says.
That focus on her goal enabled her to have self-assurance at an age when most of her peers were grappling with insecurity and a need to conform.
"I knew what I wanted to do and what I wanted to be, and I kept that in my head at all times. I'd been working since I was 8. I saw the real world when I was 8, and I knew (my school) Tenafly High School was not the real world. It was OK to be different shapes, sizes, whatever," Michele says.
It was her theater work that landed her at fictional William McKinley High School. Michele met Glee creator Ryan Murphy (the brains behind Nip/Tuck) while starring in Spring Awakening, and Glee was the first audition she had upon heading to Los Angeles.
"It was written for her. We had the prototype, which was a Reese Witherspoon Election-esque Broadway baby that was a mix of Barbra Streisand and Patti LuPone," Murphy says. "I really believed in Lea's talent because her talent was once in a lifetime."
As Rachel, Michele gets plenty of humiliation on the small screen. Last week, she was ranked last on the Glist, which measures the hotness and sexual prowess of the glee club members. Students have thrown drinks in her face and made comments made about her nose. Bring it on, says Michele, who works with the show's costume designer to put together Rachel's knee-socks-and-miniskirt ensembles and can relate to Rachel's status as a weirdo.
"I am an unconventional beauty. I grew up in a high school where if you didn't have a nose job and money and if you weren't thin, you weren't cool, popular, beautiful. I was always told that I wasn't pretty enough to be on television. I was never pretty enough to be the pretty girl and I was never quirky enough to be the quirky girl," she says. "Boys didn't look at me in high school and think I was the pretty girl. So I get Rachel. Of course, she's gorgeous."
Being on the show, Michele says, "has taught me that about myself. It really praises your differences, and it's helped me embrace mine." It also has landed Michele her first beauty campaign: a commercial for Dove hair care.
In person, Michele exudes confidence in herself and her attributes. And "she has a lot of belief in her talent," Murphy says.
She doesn't downplay her vocal gifts, or the inherent talent that allowed her to break into Broadway while her friends were playing with Barbies. At awards shows, she wears Oscar de la Renta and Herve Leger frocks.
But when she was first in Hollywood and trying to break into TV, Murphy says, "she was worried if she would find her way. She's not blond and anorexic. I love that she's gone from Rachel Berry to a red carpet darling and arguably the young actress that every designer is dying to dress. Her beauty is her own, just like Barbra Streisand's beauty was her own."
Where that beauty and talent will take her is still in question. For now, Michele is focused on Glee, which takes up the majority of her time. But she'd love to segue into films and looks up to "Amy Adams and Julia Roberts" and "the pinnacle of it all, Meryl Streep." She wants to continue finding "really amazing roles. I'd love to do a bunch of movies. I'd love to go back to theater."
Thanks to Glee, Michele says, she's booked. "But I think it's good I'm still able to play very young right now. When there is a time for me to come back to theater, I'm hoping people will see me as playing that lead role," she says. "I've gotten to do so much up to now. There's no rush. If there was a rush, you'd see me trying to do a revival of Evita in the month of June (during Glee's production break). But there's no rush, so that's not happening."
Murphy has no doubt that Michele will achieve her goals. "She's very ambitious and driven, and she's got her eye on the prize. She's always been focused," he says. "Talking to her mother, she's been that way from birth. She's an only child and you can tell."
She's matter-of-fact about the amount of work she has to put into the show. Michele, like the other leads, works 12 to 14 hours a day, starting at 6 a.m. most days to get into hair and makeup. When she's not shooting a scene, she's rehearsing choreography in the dance studio. And on top of that, she and the rest of the cast have been learning production numbers for Glee's national tour, which goes through the end of May.
Always 'on'
No matter what, Michele always arrives prepared.
"She always has everything down before she comes to set, her lines and her songs. She's a perfectionist in every way. She walks around with her notebook and makes her to-do lists," says her castmate and close friend Jenna Ushkowitz.
Landing the show meant moving to the West Coast, which "was a very uncomfortable transition at first," Michele says. "My roots are in New York. I tried to create a new life (in Los Angeles), but then I realized that my life was in New York. So Los Angeles is my work base. I'm very comfortable out there and have a safe group of people that I trust. And then I come home. This is where I breathe. I work, work, work out there and then I come here. I see shows and hang out with my family and I recharge. And there I go full-throttle."
Her focus extends to her off-screen behavior. Michele speaks crisply, answering every question with focus and purpose. There's no idle chatter, no banter. When she's on, she's on, and you get the sense that she only lets her guard down in front of the few people who are part of her inner circle.
"She keeps her few people close to her, close to her," Groff says.
When she's in interview mode, Michele will tell you firmly about her work with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals to promote spaying and neutering, and her opposition to carriage horses in Central Park. She'll explain thoroughly about how she became a vegan two years ago and might today eat fish once in a great while when she really needs protein. And she's very clear about being a role model to Glee's multitudes of young fans.
"I don't feel pressured. I'm still a human being, and I think people need to understand that. I never did drugs. I wasn't that girl. I don't go out to clubs. You'll never see me on a table at a bar, jumping up and down," she says.
Work and home
If Michele has a wild side, she's not showing it.
"She lives a very quiet life. She doesn't party," says Groff. "She doesn't go out. When we're done with work, we rent a movie. Her life is very simple, and she likes it that way. It's her choice."
She won't divulge details about her long-distance romance with her boyfriend, Theo Stockman, who is starring in American Idiot on Broadway. "I get to hang out with everybody," she sums up about why she values coming back to her home base of Manhattan as much as she can during breaks from the show.
Yet when she's around her close friends, like Groff, "she's very silly and she doesn't take herself too seriously. She loves to laugh and to make jokes, and I'm telling you, I've never laughed harder than with her. She's a trip. One day on set, we were seeing who could do a better impression of her cats. I think I won," Groff says.
Even when she's hanging out with Groff, they're hardly burning up Hollywood's club scene.
"We love working out together. We do yoga at home together. We go on hikes together. We go to the gym together. I hang out with my cast a lot," says Michele. "Everyone comes over to my house, and we like to do stuff together as much as we can. But when it's real free time, three days or whatever, I'm in New York."
Her favorite way to relax after a tough day at work?
"I'll go and get the most delicious vegan food I can find, generally from Real Food Daily. I get kale, black beans, brown rice and tofu, with lime cilantro dressing and hot sauce. I'll pour myself a glass of organic wine. I'll watch the crappiest reality television, maybe take a bath or a shower, give myself a nice little face mask and go to bed," she says.
How very, well, Rachel of her.
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