SHE'S struck a chord as Glee's shining star, but Lea Michele insists she is no prima donna. Last year, during a photoshoot at a park in less-than-salubrious part of LA, Lea Michele talked about her hopes for Glee, the TV show in which she plays the Hermione Granger-esque Rachel Berry, and which, a few days earlier, had premiered on Fox in the US.
“All we can hope for,” she said matter-of-factly, “is that people like it and understand what it is we’re trying to do.”
Standing next to her, Cory Monteith (who plays Finn Hudson, the heart-throb quarterback who likes to sing) nodded his agreement.
“I know it might seem weird – with all the singing and dancing – but we’re just keeping our fingers crossed that people get it,” he said modestly.
It turns out there was no need to worry – Glee has become one of the most popular programs on TV, both here and in the US.
“It’s kind of crazy, because it’s sort of everything you hope will happen with a TV show or film, or a Broadway show,” says Michele today, sitting outside a cafe
in LA on a bright Sunday morning.
“You hope the fans will embrace it, the viewers will embrace it and the critics will embrace it.”
Behind her, a couple with a stroller do a double-take as they walk past, the woman glancing back across her shoulder and excitedly whispering in her partner’s ear. Michele doesn’t notice.
“We’ve been welcomed and embraced and loved,” she goes on, taking a sip of water. “We’ve been really lucky.”
As with the more successful of its predecessors (High School Musical, Bring it On, Hairspray, even 10 Things I Hate About You), Glee infuses its familiar high-school milieu with a healthy mix of satire and sentimentality.
Everything is played out by an unusually strong cast (every moment Jane Lynch has onscreen as coach Sue Sylvester, coach of the school’s cheerleaders, the Cheerios, is pure delight) and a who’s who of guest stars, but even among such a talented ensemble, Michele’s the standout, the show’s lead in a cast of contenders.
Not that she’d ever admit it.
“I don’t look at it that way, I just play my part,” she says
as she orders a breakfast of oatmeal with soy milk and berries. (A macrobiotic vegan, she’s “all about health”.)
“I’m not going to have coffee on an empty stomach. Before I know it, I’ll be telling you my life story and it will get ugly. Anyway, yes, my cast is so important to me.”
But she has the strongest voice, I suggest.
“I’m really lucky,” she interjects. “As a 24-year-old actor, to have the chance to play such a great role is awesome. That’s the most important thing.”
She takes another sip and levels her eyes with mine. That’s the end of that. This young star, I’m reminded, has been in the business a long time.
Born Lea Michele Sarfati in the Bronx, and raised in New Jersey, the actor who’s worked steadily since she was a child seems just as motivated and focused as her Glee persona. Ask her about any comparison and she says, “Rachel Berry is very much me when I was about 10. [Now] I’m a lot quieter. I don’t like the spotlight as much as she does.”
She pauses and corrects herself: “I don’t need the spotlight as much as she does.”
Her eyes, the same dark brown as her hair, are wide and expressive and simmer with ambition. She talks quickly and emotively, articulating every word with the clarity that a lifetime treading the boards no doubt affords.
A loose black top hangs off one shoulder. Her smile could illuminate a box of light bulbs.
Michele was eight when she accompanied her best friend to an audition for Les Misérables on Broadway.
“It was a joke, I just went to support her,” she says. “But I auditioned and I got it. It was total luck. At that point, I wanted to work as a waiter or in a grocery store – I had that fake grocery store with the toy food and money; I was eight years old! – but I auditioned for Broadway and I got it. And I went from show to show until I came out [to LA] when I was 21.
"I never regretted my job. It never got in the way to the degree that I felt I needed to stop.”
Then came the smash-hit musical Spring Awakening, in which she played the lead opposite her close friend Jonathan Groff (who’s guest starred in Glee).
All of a sudden, Broadway had a young, fashionable face and musicals were cool. Michele’s image, beautifully rendered in black-and-white shots that wouldn’t have been out of place in a fashion magazine, was plastered on taxis, buses and billboards all over New York.
“Very rarely does a Broadway show become popular like that,” she says.
“I think that’s why I wanted to leave New York for a while, because it was so big. So, I came to LA, expecting to stay for a few months to audition. Then, after my first month here, I was booked for Glee.”
Michele first met the show’s creator, Ryan Murphy (known for the cult hit Nip/Tuck), in 2007, through mutual friend Groff. After she landed the role of Rachel Berry, Murphy told her he’d written the character with her in mind.
Although Michele lives in LA, she tries to be in New York every few weeks.
“I miss it. A lot of kids go through life trying to figure out who they are. But when you grow up in New York, you figure it out, because you can be yourself there. I feel like you can’t be yourself in LA. It’s very pretty when you visit, but if you’re a real New Yorker, it’s hard to live in LA. I don’t like to do a lot of the things that girls like to do here.
"I don’t go to clubs. I have a very quiet life.”
Indeed, you won’t see photos of her rolling out of celebrity haunts at 4am, because she’s never there. She’s more likely to be at home, some vegan cupcakes cooling on the stove top
(“I love to bake – I bake for the crew all the time”).
The star’s work schedule, which is about 75 hours a week, is far more intense than that of your average TV actor, who spends most of their time hanging around the set.
“We’re basically working all day, every day,” she says.
“If we’re not filming, we’re dancing. If we’re not dancing, we’re recording. We’re never waiting. When we’re not doing something, they give us something to do. And I like that;
"I’m all about keeping moving. Whenever we slow down, I feel really tired and I stop. I like being busy, because I have a lot of energy and I’m a hard worker. I love whatever the day has in store. I’m like, ‘Let’s go for it!’”
Glee, then, seems tailor-made for her. “Yes, it kind of is.”
She checks her BlackBerry – she’s due onset, where the cast and crew have three episodes left to film before the principal ‘Gleeks’ embark on a four-city US tour.
Kind of a big deal, isn’t it?
“I know, but we’re still working on our show,” she explains.
“Maybe I won’t really feel all those things until we take a break and have time to enjoy the success. If it seems as if I’m not realising that stuff, it’s just because I’m not thinking about it. I’m thinking, what are we doing next week?”
But there must have been highlights in all the success?
“I loved singing ‘Don’t Rain On My Parade’ in the season one finale. And the Golden Globes was awesome. My mom came with me and it was fun to dress up and watch Meryl Streep talk to Amy Adams. Tom Hanks came up to me and said he loves my work. Stuff like that is cool. That’s when it hits you.”
Being recognised by Glee fans doesn’t faze her.
“If you’re the kind of person who wants attention, you’ll get it. I’ve never had my picture taken by paparazzi, because I work all the time.”
But it’s a different story when the cast goes out, or now that Michele has hit the red carpet in a dramatically slimmed-down figure.
“That’s when it’s how you’d imagine it. But people don’t go, ‘Oh my God, Lea Michele!’ They go, ‘Are you that girl from Glee?’”
With that, she finishes her oatmeal and puts down her spoon, ready to head back onset. This time, there are lots of people waiting for the new episodes.
“I’m in the same place I was last time I saw you – wondering how they’re going to do, if people will like them,” she says as she stands up to leave.
“We just have to keep making good television, and we’ve set the bar pretty high.”
Glee airs Wednesdays at 7.30pm on Network Ten.
0 commenti:
Post a Comment