Twitter Turned Upside Down After Lea Michele Was Cast as the Lead in 'Funny Girl'

Chelsey Sanchez
·4 min read
Photo credit: Jason Merritt/TERM - Getty Images
Photo credit: Jason Merritt/TERM - Getty Images
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It's been an exciting past 24 hours for theater kids, born again Gleeks, Twitter critics, and—last but certainly not least—Lea Michele.

Here's what you missed: Producers for the Broadway production of Funny Girl announced yesterday that Lea Michele will take over the lead role of Fanny Brice from Beanie Feldstein, who unceremoniously announced just hours before that she'd be departing the show months before her run was set to end.

"Playing Fanny Brice on Broadway has been a lifelong dream of mine, and doing so for the last few months has been a great joy and true honor," Feldstein wrote in a telling Instagram post. "Once the production decided to take the show in a different direction, I made the extremely difficult decision to step away sooner than anticipated."

Michele had long been considered a frontrunner for the musical since she played Glee's resident diva Rachel Berry, a devout Funny Girl disciple who, in a twist of meta luck, had also snagged the lead in the fictional Broadway revival in the beloved dramedy. In real life, Michele waded into troubled waters in 2020 when allegations of her toxic and micro-aggresive behavior on the Glee set emerged from former costars. (Notably, Jane Lynch, who played Sue Sylvester opposite Michele on Glee and now plays Rosie Brice in the current Funny Girl revival, is ending her run early, too, just days before Michele is set to take over.)

"A dream come true is an understatement," Michele wrote on Instagram following the announcement of her casting. "I’m so incredibly honored to join this amazing cast and production and return to the stage playing Fanny Brice on Broadway."

Naturally, Twitter has erupted into flames over the Broadway drama. Ahead, the Internet defends Feldstein, theorizes on Michele's backstage behavior, and continues to speculate over the Glee star's literacy abilities.

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