You can’t rain on his parade.
Lea Michele returns to the role that launched her career in the Disney+ and Hulu reboot of “Glee,” the musical drama series created by Ryan Murphy. Variety confirmed the news with several sources.
“She’s here,” a source said. “It’s still early, but it feels good and we’re happy to have the group back together again,” said another.
Representatives for Michele and Murphy had no comment for this story.
So far, two of Michele’s castmates on “Glee” have made social media posts that seem to confirm that they will also return: Heather Morris, who plays Brittany Pierce, and Chord Overstreet, who plays Sam Evans.
For six seasons on Fox from 2009 to 2015, Michele led the cast of “Glee” as the precocious, arrogant and mega-talented Rachel Berry, one of the original members of the McKinley High School Glee Club. Over the course of the series, Rachel has often alienated her peers with her ambition; while she would stop at nothing to pursue her dreams on Broadway and beyond, she privately struggled with her reputation and personal relationships. She was in an on-again, off-again relationship with football player and Glee Club peer Finn Hudson – played by Cory Monteith, who Michele dated in real life – before the actor’s death.
Michele was already a veteran Broadway performer before “Glee,” having appeared in “Les Misérables,” “Ragtime,” “Fiddler on the Roof” and most notably “Spring Awakening” alongside Jonathan Groff. After “Glee”, she played smaller roles in several film and television projects, including another Murphy collaboration in Fox’s “Scream Queens” (2015-2016). She has enjoyed a career renaissance since 2022, when she joined the cast of the Broadway revival of “Funny Girl” as Fanny Brice — who gained attention not only for her acclaimed performance, but also for its resonance with her “Glee” character, who dreamed of playing Fanny for years before finally landing the role and later leaving it behind.
Michele was nominated for an Emmy and two Golden Globes for her work on “Glee.”
“I’ve been in contact with about 10 of the original cast members,” Murphy recently said in a recent interview with “Entertainment Tonight,” in which he confirmed that he had just written a “Glee” reboot script with collaborators Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan. “It’s very nice, and they all had a lot of questions, but they were all very excited about the idea.”
A few weeks earlier, Michele told “E! News” that she would be happy to join a “Glee” reboot. “I love ‘Glee.’ I will always love ‘Glee,'” she said. “I love Ryan Murphy. This holds such a special place in my heart for me…I will follow Ryan wherever he goes. “
In the series finale, which aired on March 20, 2015, Rachel won a Tony, married Jesse St. James (played by Michele’s best friend Groff), and became a surrogate mother to Kurt Hummel (Chris Colfer) and Blaine Anderson (Darren Criss).
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