Hey guys, Willie Geist here with another episode of the Sunday Sit Down podcast. My thanks,

as always for clicking and listening along. Got a great conversation for you this week with

Leah Michelle. Leah is currently starring in the Broadway musical Chess at the Imperial Theater in New York

City. It's the very same theater where she got her start on Broadway. She will tell you the

story in our interview, but she was growing up. Normal kid, no Broadway dreams, no dreams of

stardom in New Jersey, Bronx- born, Jersey raised, and joined her friend

at an audition for Les Miserab when she was eight years old. She sang a song from Phantom

of the Opera, just kind of off the cuff and got the part. So by eight years old, she's in

Les Miz and a Broadway career is born. The rest of the world got to know her

in Glee, of course, where she starred for six seasons as Rachel Berry, beginning in 2009. So that was,

as much as people know her from that, that was kind of an interruption almost of her Broadway career.

So she was doing Broadway, was in a show called Spring Awakening, which was a big hit,

won a bunch of Tonys. She starred in that with Jonathan Groff, great Broadway, and television

actor, he was the king in Hamilton. You might remember, a good friend of hers as well. You'll

hear his name in our conversation. So she'd done all that on Broadway. And then Ryan Murphy,

who was developing a show for Fox about a Glee club, sought her out and asked her to come be on TV.

There's a crazy story about her audition.

She's okay, but there was a car wreck on the way to the audition.

She still did the audition.

She'll tell you that story.

And then returned to Broadway after her run on Glee. She came back in

Funny Girl as Fannie Bryce and got to play the role played by one of her heroes. She speaks

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