Those You’ve Known: Lea Michele and Jonathan Groff Reunite on ‘Glee’

For nearly two years, Lea Michele and Jonathan Groff shared a stage in the Off Broadway and Broadway productions of “Spring Awakening” as Wendla and Melchior, the German youths who share feelings, a beating and many more intimate acts during an ill-fated romance. After enduring that for eight shows a week, Ms. Michele and Mr. Groff did not get sick of each other, and instead forged a friendship that, as you’ll shortly see, is unusual, even for theater people.

It’s a friendship that has lasted as Mr. Groff has continued his career in theater (“Prayer for My Enemy,” “The Singing Forest”) and film (“Taking Woodstock”) and Ms. Michele has become a star of the Fox series “Glee” (which Alessandra Stanley and Jon Caramanica debated in Arts & Leisure). On Tuesday the actors are reunited in the spring premiere of “Glee,” when Mr. Groff joins the cast as Jesse St. James, the lead singer of a rival high-school choir determined to make trouble for Rachel Berry, the aspiring superstar played by Ms. Michele.

In these excerpts from a recent conversation with ArtsBeat, conducted while Mr. Groff was on a break and Ms. Michele attempted to drive herself to her stylist’s house, the performers talked about their work together on “Spring Awakening” and “Glee,” and their unusual friendship, which manifested itself before a single question could be asked.

Lea Michele: I hate Jonathan Groff. I’m so excited that someone’s finally doing a story on how awful Jonathan Groff is.
Jonathan Groff: And I’m so sick of being in the same room as her, too.
Michele: I’m just really glad that somebody finally is ready to write about this. It needed to get out there.
Groff: Time to tell the truth.

Did your paths ever cross before you started working together on “Spring Awakening”?

Groff: No, Lea was busy on Broadway and I was busy waiting tables.
Michele: When I saw Jonathan at the “Spring Awakening” audition, I had done, prior to the Off Broadway production, I think three workshops of the show. And I had worked with two prior Melchiors. They’d narrowed it down to a couple guys, and Jonathan was one of them. And I was like, this boy is so sweet – I was trying to help him out – but poor thing’s not going to get this job. I felt bad for him, and then he ended up obviously getting the part and just being incredible.
Groff: As each potential Melchior would walk into the room, she would shake our hands and tell us that she had played Wendla in the past three workshops. And I remember before we did the beating scene, which was our audition scene, she had a specific way in which you were to hit her on the wrist with your pencil.
Michele: Well, what I was trying to do, with the Melchiors that I liked, was give them little pointers so that Michael Mayer would like them. And Jonathan was one of them. I liked him, but a lot of it was also out of pity. He looked very different from how he looks right now. Jonathan used to wear pants that were like 10 sizes too small on him. But not in, like, a skinny way – in like a “these were my skinny pants that I wore in the fifth grade” way. They were short at the ankles, and sweaters that had been washed in the washing machine, and not dry-cleaned.
Groff: And the CVS gel in the hair.
Michele: I definitely helped Jonathan with that look over time.
Groff: Yes, every time there’s a birthday or an occasion, the gift I get from Lea is pretty much always clothes.

“Spring Awakening” required you to reveal yourselves to each other in many ways. Did that kind of intimacy come naturally or did you have to work at it?

Michele: We definitely connected right away, but I never would have guessed in a million years that we would become as comfortable as we did with one another. Because we are so different, and we’d come from two completely different backgrounds. It’s not like one thing happened; it’s just been a progression, professionally, and friendship-wise, that’s just, I think, always continued to grow.
Groff: It’s like country mouse and city mouse, the two of us. Lea’s very Upper West Side, New York, and I’m from Pennsylvania. What was really interesting for me is after “Spring Awakening” was over, you do shows with people and you get close with them and then they’re over, and relationships remain or don’t remain. With Lea and I, our relationship had been completely defined by our working environment. But the amazing thing is after the show was over, we continued to remain close, which is the true testament of a friendship.

Who left the show first?

Michele: We left on the same night. There would have been no way I could have ever done the show without Jonathan.
Groff: Likewise.
Michele: What we created was very personal – it wasn’t even an option.

When I saw “Spring Awakening” I had to cut out before the end. I assume everything worked out O.K. for Wendla and Melchior?

Michele: Yeah. Totally. They’re all good. They’ve had more children. They waited a little while to have any more. But now they’re great, they’re awesome. They’re model parents. [laughs]

So, Jonathan, you’re continuing to work in the theater and Lea, you’re starting to work on “Glee.” Are you still staying in touch during this time?

Michele: [laughs] I don’t think you understand – I don’t think you get it. I don’t go a day without talking to Jonathan. I don’t go a day without being in contact with him. Our families are very close, every New Year’s we spend together with our families, we have a tradition with them. We’ve been on trips together. I’ve driven reluctantly to the country, to Jonathan’s house.
Groff: [laughs] You even saw me in all of my plays.
Michele: I’ve seen Jonathan in every job he’s ever done. He’s been my date to things like the SAG awards and openings. I grew up never having had close friends because I was working all the time. All the girls, growing up, everyone had their best friends. And I never, ever had that. And Jonathan is really and truly my first and only best friend. And I couldn’t have picked a better person.

Literally, our friends call us mom and dad. Sometimes I’m on the phone with Jonathan and I’m like: “Dad, I miss you so much. I can’t wait that you’re going to come over tonight and sleep in bed with me, and I can hold you all night long.” The people that are next to me look at me all weird. This one time, Jonathan got out of a cab and dropped me off at home, and I was like, “ ‘Bye, dad, I love you.” And he [the driver] goes, “That’s your dad?”

Do you think there’s some part of your parents that’s still hoping against hope you’ll get married some day?

Michele: Listen, my father has offered Jonathan millions to marry me. Millions. Right, Jonathan, what did he say to you?
Groff: [in a Jewish father voice] “I’ll buy you a house.”
Michele: He has some condition or something like that, that won’t allow him to marry me.
Groff: Oh God.

Lea, did you help Jonathan get cast on “Glee”?

Michele: Jonathan was the one that got me the part on “Glee” first.
Groff: You got yourself the part on “Glee.” But what happened was, when we were doing “Spring Awakening,” I came out to California for a month to shoot a pilot for Ryan Murphy, who created “Glee,” for FX. The pilot didn’t get picked up, but during that time, all the shows on Broadway went down because of the stagehands’ strike. So Lea came out and stayed with me for a couple of days in California, and we all went to dinner one night, with Ryan and some of the cast from the show. And Ryan was like, “I’m working on this television show, ‘Glee,’ and Lea, there’s this perfect part for you, and I’ll keep you in mind.’”
Michele: He kept me in mind while writing it. And Jonathan would tell me: “Remember that guy Ryan we met? Well he’s writing this show, ‘Glee,’ and he’s telling me that he has you in mind for the part.” And one thing led to another, and I auditioned and I got it.

So, Lea, Ryan’s telling you this part is being written for you, and then the character turns out to be kind of a high-maintenance princess. What are we supposed to conclude?

Groff: He knew she could really stretch herself for this one. He knew she could really go outside of her comfort level and really play this part.
Michele: I have the best job in the world. I don’t care at all about anything like that.

And that eventually led to Jonathan getting on the show?

Michele: We always were like, he has to come on the show.
Groff: And then Ryan said, if the show does well, we’ll figure out something for you in the back nine episodes, and then it became the crazy phenomenon that it is, and so he gave me this part.

How was the character of Jesse St. James explained to you?

Groff: Ryan Murphy told me that he was a miva. I didn’t know what that was, but I guess it’s a male diva.
Michele: I thought you said “an amoeba.”
Groff: No, a miva. M-I-V-A.
Michele: O.K., got it.
Groff: He’s the lead singer of Vocal Adrenaline, very pompous, very competitive, very intense. He wanted me to play a part that was not sweet and innocent like I’m used to playing. He wanted me to play against type in this show. But I think the connection with Lea was inevitable.

Did it help coming into a show where you knew you had a good friend waiting for you?

Groff: Completely. I went and visited her on set in the fall of last year, when they were shooting the first season.
Michele: You visited me twice!
Groff: Yeah, twice, you’re right. And she introduced me to everyone. Whenever you get into a new environment, it’s scary. You don’t know the people, you’re not really comfortable with the machine that the show is. I felt really lucky to have her, and the fact that the first scenes I was working on in the show were with her.
Michele: But also my cast, we’re like a little family. And we’re very attached at the hip, so Jonathan having the opportunity to meet them and spend time with them prior to being on the show really helped.

You’re both on “Glee” now, and Idina Menzel is in these new episodes, and Kristin Chenoweth is coming back. Is it the mission of the show to steal everyone from Broadway?

Michele: If you’re coming from Broadway, you’re familiar with music and singing, and working hard and long days, things like that. But we’ve also had people like Molly Shannon come on the show. Ryan writes characters, and then thinks about who could play the character. If they happen to be from Broadway then there you go.
Groff: What we think of Broadway, how it used to be in the Golden Age, there were no microphones, and so to be on Broadway you had to be this larger-than-life personality, reach to the back row of the theater and all of that. Theater has become so much more intimate in the past decade, with microphones and different styles of pop music, so people think, “Oh, Broadway people can’t be on television because they’re too big.” I feel like this show sort of perfectly shows you how times are changing, and how, just because you act on a Broadway stage, doesn’t mean you don’t know how to be truthful and honest and intimate and smaller on camera. It’s very theatrical, the show, but there’s lots of real honest acting moments on the show. I was watching Lea in the first episode of the back nine, and I was blown away by her scenes.

Do you think of yourselves as a kind of modern-day Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers?

Michele: Not Fred Astaire. I’d say we could be Sonny and Cher.
Groff: Totally, that sounds good to me.

Given how things ended for Wendla and Melchior in “Spring Awakening,” should I not get my hopes up for Rachel Berry and Jesse St. James?

Michele: You’re going to have to wait and see!
Groff: [imitating] You’re going to have to wait and see!

Nobody’s going to accidentally find himself at somebody else’s grave site?

Groff: You’ll have to wait and see!