On Sunday Night, Lea Michele Launched Straight From Chess Into “Dancing Queen”

When Lea Michele takes the stage each night in Michael Mayer’s inspired new revival of Chess, she’s doing so in the same theater—the Imperial—where she made her Broadway debut, playing Cosette in Les Misérables.

“Everything feels so full circle,” she tells Vogue amid the last clutch of rehearsals and previews. “Every night, I stand in the exact same spot where I began at age eight. To be back with Chess is a dream come true.” The stage-door experience has already proven a lot of fun: “That’s my favorite way to end a night,” she says. “To hear and see how it really resonates with people.”

Before Michele even knew the story of the 1988 musical—which sees a pair of American and Soviet chess champions, Freddie Trumper (Aaron Tveit) and Anatoly Sergievsky (Nicholas Christopher), face off professionally and romantically, with Michele’s Hungarian theoretician Florence Vassy caught between them—she was enchanted by Idina Menzel’s version of “Nobody’s Side” from a London concert staging in 2008. (Tim Rice and ABBA’s Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus are responsible for the show’s lyrics and music.) “I got to tell her face-to-face recently that she introduced this show to my life,” Michele says of Menzel, who would go on to play her mother on Glee.

With a refreshed book by Emmy-winning writer Danny Strong (Empire, Dopesick), Mayer’s highly anticipated production marks Chess’s first Broadway revival—and the first time Michele has opened a show on Broadway since Spring Awakening. (In the interim, she stepped up to play Fanny Brice in the 2022 Broadway revival of Funny Girl a few months into its run.)

“I’ve fallen for Florence all over again with Danny’s script,” says Michele. “It was a collaborative process in the spring and summer—I felt so supported in making sure that Florence has a voice in this man’s world and that she’s not, no pun intended, a pawn between two men. She is her own woman.” She adds that Florence presented an appealing challenge for her as an actor. “She’s not the most outwardly expressive character I’ve ever played—like a Rachel Berry or Fanny Brice. I had to harness and control these very strong emotions she feels and make sure the audience saw that. ‘Nobody’s Side’ is that moment.”