Lea Michele's 'Les Mis' Audition: How She Landed Broadway at 8 Singing Both Parts

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The actress exclusively tells BroadwayWorld about auditioning for her first Broadway show on a whim.

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Lea Michele is having a full-circle moment each night at Broadway’s Imperial Theatre.

The actress, who is starring as Florence Vassy in the revival of Chess opposite Aaron Tveit and Nicholas Christopher , remembered what it was like to take the stage nightly at the Imperial when she was making her Broadway debut in Les Misérables as a child.

During an exclusive interview with BroadwayWorld’s Richard Ridge at famed theater district restaurant Sardi’s, the 39-year-old actress said that “everything” feels the same at the Imperial, where the original Broadway production of Les Miz played through 2003 after spending a few years at the Broadway Theatre (where it opened in 1987).

“The smell is the same,” Michele said. “I walk out onstage to sing ‘Someone Else’s Story’ [in Chess ] at the end of the show, and I’m just all alone by myself on the stage. I think it’s the only time that I’m all alone on the stage , and it’s the last song that I sing, and I look right at the center mark, and I think, ‘That’s where I stood to sing ‘Castle on a Cloud’ when I was 8.”

“It’s an unbelievable, unbelievable full-circle moment,” she said.

Michele — who alternated the roles of Young Cosette and Young Eponine and understudied the role of Gavroche — auditioned on a whim.

The actress recalled how she went to an open-call audition after her friend’s father had a medical emergency that prevented him from taking his daughter as planned.

“I sang ‘Angel of Music’ [from The Phantom of the Opera ], both parts!” Michele explained to BroadwayWorld. “It’s a two-person song, and I made it one, and they were like, ‘Who is this girl, and what is she doing?’ I went with a friend, Chloe — she had taken me to see a bunch of Broadway shows before, and there was an open call in our hometown, and I wasn’t even supposed to go.”

“But we ended up having to take her cause her father got sick the night before, and then I ended up auditioning, so it was all of these things where it was like: this wouldn’t have happened if that hadn’t happened,” Michele explained. “But then it all came together, and I was on Broadway two weeks later.”

At the time, Michele said, her father owned a deli in the Bronx. When Michele’s mother learned that she booked the role, “I remember her calling my dad on a payphone and being like, ‘She got the part!’”

“We went to my dad’s deli, and my mother had to leave because we had a family member who was sick, and I just remember being there like all alone at my father’s deli in the Bronx, behind the counter with him, [thinking], ‘What is about to happen? What’s about to happen right now? I think something big just happened,’” Michele remembered.

Two weeks later, she said, “I was on Broadway, and I just turned to my parents, and I just was like, ‘I want to do this for the rest of my life .’”

Following her Broadway debut in Les Miz , Michele went on to play the Little Girl in Ragtime , sharing the stage with Audra McDonald , among many other Broadway greats.

She landed her breakthrough role in Spring Awakening , playing Wendla opposite Jonathan Groff , before she booked a starring role on the television series Glee .

She returned to Broadway in the revival of Funny Girl before taking on the part of Florence in Chess .

“This is the first time I get to enter a story as a grown woman,” Michele said. “She has an incredibly tragic past and a deep history to her, but that is all something that she holds deep within herself.”

Photo Credit: Bruce Glikas

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_Originally reported by [BroadwayWorld](https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/Lea-Michele-Reveals-What-Duet-She-Sang-Both-Parts-of-to-Land-Her-Broadway-Debut-at-Age-8-20260519)._