Glee Stars on Stage: A Gleek’s Guide to Broadway

Lea Michele’s Broadway career started more than a decade before she graced our screens as Glee’s neurotic diva, Rachel Berry. She made her Broadway debut as Little Cosette in the 1995 revival of Les Misérables, a musical that has remained a major influence throughout her career. She played Eponine in a star-studded Los Angeles concert, and also sang ‘On My Own’ in Glee’s pilot and ‘I Dreamed a Dream’ with Broadway stalwart Idina Menzel.

Spring Awakening proved Michele’s Broadway breakthrough in 2006. She originated the role of Wendla in the musical’s early workshops, acclaimed Off-Broadway run and Tony-winning Broadway transfer, earning a Drama Desk nomination.

On Glee, Rachel was obsessed with Barbra Streisand and Funny Girl. In season four, she auditioned to play Fanny Brice on Broadway and, by the following season, had landed the role. In a remarkable case of life imitating art, Michele returned to Broadway in 2022 to star as Fanny in the struggling Funny Girl revival. Her acclaimed performance revitalised the production and broke several box-office records at the August Wilson Theatre.

Most recently, she starred in the revival of Chess at the Imperial Theatre opposite Aaron Tveit.

Matthew Morrison made his Broadway debut in Footloose in 1998. He rose to prominence as Link Larkin in Hairspray in 2002, before earning a Tony nomination for The Light in the Piazza in 2005.

On Glee, “Mr Schue” performed several songs from Singin’ in the Rain, including, in true Glee style, a mash-up of the title song with Rihanna’s ‘Umbrella’. He also performed songs from The Rocky Horror Show, having appeared in the musical on Broadway in 2000.

After leaving Glee, Morrison returned to Broadway in 2015 in Finding Neverland, and in 2026, replaced Jonathan Groff in Just in Time at the Circle in the Square Theatre.

Jonathan Groff played Jesse St. James, lead singer of rival show choir Vocal Adrenaline. Despite not singing any musical theater numbers on Glee, he has become one of Broadway’s most in-demand performers.

Groff made his Broadway debut in the short-lived flop In My Life in 2005, before starring opposite Lea Michele in Spring Awakening a year later. In 2015, Groff joined the Broadway transfer of Hamilton as King George III, before winning his first Tony Award in 2023 for Merrily We Roll Along. He received another nomination in 2025 for playing Bobby Darin in Just in Time.

Later this year, he will join the UK’s Royal Shakespeare Company for an all-male production of As You Like It.

Alex Newell joined Glee in its third season as Unique Adams, breaking ground as one of the most visible transgender characters on US television. 

After Glee, Newell made their Broadway debut in the 2017 revival of Once on This Island and returned in 2023 for Shucked, winning the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical. Alongside fellow winner J. Harrison Ghee, Newell became one of the first openly non-binary performers to win an acting Tony. They will star as Rona in the Off-Broadway revival of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee this summer.

Darren Criss joined Glee’s second season as Blaine Anderson, lead singer of the Dalton Academy Warblers, mentor and later love interest to Kurt Hummel. 

Criss made his Broadway debut in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying in 2012, replacing Daniel Radcliffe, before taking the lead in Hedwig and the Angry Inch in 2015. He then stepped away from the stage to portray serial killer Andrew Cunanan in Ryan Murphy’s American Crime Story, winning a Golden Globe and an Emmy for his performance.

He returned to Broadway in the 2022 revival of American Buffalo and most recently as Oliver in the acclaimed Maybe Happy Ending at the Belasco Theatre. Criss won a Tony Award – and legions of Broadway fans’ hearts – for his performance as an obsolete helper-bot finding love.

Criss also co-founded and produces Elsie Fest, a music festival named after the character Elsie from the musical Cabaret. The yearly event celebrates songs from stage and screen and allows fans to sing along to musical theater like they’re at a rock concert. 

Amber Riley stunned viewers from Glee’s first episode with her powerhouse vocals as Mercedes Jones. She won Dancing with the Stars in 2013 before crossing the Atlantic to play Effie in the 2016 West End premiere of Dreamgirls. Her rendition of ‘And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going’ drew nightly standing ovations and earned her an Olivier Award. With Dreamgirls set to return to Broadway for the first time in more than 40 years, could Riley reprise her award-winning performance? Most recently, she joined the world-premiere cast of Tituss Burgess’s musical adaptation of The Preacher’s Wife at the Alliance Theatre in 2024. 

Glee would be nothing without acid-tongued antagonist Sue Sylvester trying to thwart the club at every turn. Jane Lynch won an Emmy, a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award for the role. On the show, she sang numbers from Wonderful Town, Meet Me in St. Louis and Funny Girl. Lynch made her Broadway debut in 2013 as Miss Hannigan in Annie and later appeared as Mrs Brice in Funny Girl, missing Glee co-star Lea Michele by only a few weeks.

Kevin McHale played Artie Abrams, a wheelchair-using musician and original member of New Directions. McHale has yet to make his Broadway debut, but recently starred in the Off-Broadway revival of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, earning an Outer Critics Circle nomination. He also appeared in the rarely revived Stephen Sondheim musical The Frogs in London in 2025. 

Over the years, Glee welcomed a plethora of Broadway stars in guest roles, bringing their signature theatrical style to the show. Some of the most notable include Wicked alum Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth; Broadway legends Carol Burnett, Patti LuPone and June Squibb; and Tony winners Brian Stokes Mitchell and Neil Patrick Harris. 

At its height, Glee regularly attracted more than 10 million viewers, peaking at 26.8 million after the 2011 Super Bowl. More than 200 songs reached the Billboard Hot 100, breaking records held by the Beatles and Elvis Presley, while its arena tour played to over half a million fans. But how did a musical comedy about an unfashionable high-school show choir become one of the defining television programmes of its era?

Timing was crucial. Glee arrived just as social media was transforming. In 2009, platforms such as Twitter were becoming mainstream, and the TV show’s creators Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk, and Ian Brennan, alongside members of the cast would live-tweet episodes, responding directly to viewers as the action unfolded. Fans were no longer simply watching the show, but discussing, dissecting and celebrating it together in real time. This helped create a fiercely engaged community of self-proclaimed “Gleeks” and made the show an early beneficiary of what became known as second-screen viewing.

Its representation was equally important. As Mr Schue said: “You're all minorities. You're in the Glee Club.” Glee placed characters who were often marginalised elsewhere at the center of a mainstream network hit. Its stories included the queer relationships between Kurt and Blaine and Santana and Brittany, as well as characters living with disability, Down syndrome and OCD. Unique, a Black transgender teenager, brought questions of gender identity to a mass audience years before such discussions became commonplace on network television. While some criticized this representation as leaning heavily on stereotypes, for many young viewers seeing even imperfect versions of themselves represented on screen could be profoundly affirming.

Most importantly, Glee found a way to make the television musical accessible to viewers who might never ordinarily watch one, combining the emotional heft of a teenage drama with an instantly recognisable soundtrack. Its covers of hits by artists including Lady Gaga, Katy Perry and Adele kept the programme connected to popular culture, while its use of Broadway standards and older classics broadened its appeal across generations. At its best, Glee used music to express emotions its characters could not put into words: ‘Keep Holding On’ transformed Quinn Fabray’s teen pregnancy fears into a moment of communal support, while Rachel’s ‘Make You Feel My Love’, performed following Cory Monteith/Finn Hudson’s death, blurred the boundary between character and real-life grief.

The show’s blend of pop spectacle, melodrama and irreverent comedy was often chaotic and sometimes contradictory. Yet that unpredictability was also central to its appeal. Glee made outsiders feel like stars and invited millions of viewers to believe that there might be a place where their differences would be celebrated.

For many young viewers, Glee was their first meaningful introduction to musical theater. Someone who tuned in to hear their favorite pop songs could find themselves encountering Funny Girl, Wicked, or Les Misérables a few minutes later. By placing show tunes alongside pop hits, Glee stripped away the perception that theater was old-fashioned or inaccessible.

The programme gave classic songs a new life, often introducing them to audiences far larger than a Broadway production could reach. Its version of ‘Defying Gravity’, performed by Rachel and Kurt, reached number 31 on the Billboard Hot 100 — higher even than Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande’s recording from the blockbuster Wicked film, which peaked at number 44. That a cover performed by two fictional high-school students remains the song’s highest-charting version demonstrates Glee’s extraordinary reach. A performance on Glee became a gateway to original cast recordings. Rachel’s ‘Don’t Rain on My Parade’ lead listeners to Barbra Streisand and Funny Girl; Kurt’s ‘Rose’s Turn’ to Gypsy; Mercedes’ ‘And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going’ to Dreamgirls. 

Glee also presented a career on Broadway and in the arts as something tangible and possible. The students were encouraged to imagine themselves performing on the world’s biggest stages, something many young viewers could take back to their own school lives. Rachel’s journey to Broadway in the show might be romanticized, but it still gave viewers a glimpse at what their own talent, confidence and relentless determination might achieve.

Ultimately, Glee made Broadway feel current and worth exploring, sending a generation of viewers searching for the shows, performers and cast recordings behind the songs they had discovered on television, and introduced them to the undeniable thrill of live theater.

Is there an upcoming reboot in the works? Ryan Murphy recently spoke about the possibility to People, saying, “[Glee] is interesting because it’s come back around. So many young people now watch it. And I’m like, ‘Maybe we should revisit that show.’” The first iteration of Glee became a cultural sensation. Time will tell if Murphy can catch lightning in a bottle twice. 

… "And that's what you missed on Glee!"