Former Glee co-stars Lea Michele and Alex Newell reunited at the 2023 Tony Awards, where the latter star made history as the first non-binary performer to win a Tony. Lea, 36, shared a selfie of the pair on Instagram to congratulate Alex, 30, on winning the Tony Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical. The two stars — who seemingly have a complicated past because of the allegations against Lea regarding her behavior on the set of Glee — had big smiles on their faces in the selfie. “Congratulations @thealexnewell !!!! @thetonyawards,” Lea wrote in her caption.
Lea sat behind Alex at the Tonys, and watched as her former co-star got on stage to accept an award for their role in the musical Shucked. At the end of the show, Lea performed “Don’t Rain On My Parade” from her show Funny Girl. Despite receiving major appraise for her performance in the role, Lea was not eligible to be nominated at the 2023 Tonys, since she was not an original star of the production. She replaced Beanie Feldstein in the role in September 2022, and she’ll be with the show until it closes on Broadway on September 3.
Before she returned to Broadway for Funny Girl, Lea was at the center of controversy regarding her alleged behavior on Glee. In 2020, several of her former Glee castmates — including Samantha Ware — accused Lea of cruel and diva-like behavior on-set. Alex, who played Unique Adams on the Fox series, chimed in on the allegations against Lea at the time, by directly responding to Samantha’s tweet with a gif saying “Get her.” Alex shared another tweet about Samantha’s claims against Lea where they wrote, “I’m gonna say this one time… when my friends goes through something traumatic I also go through it… that’s what friendship is.”
Lea apologized for her alleged behavior and stayed out of the spotlight for a while, until she landed Funny Girl. In February, Lea opened up about the Glee controversy with Interview Magazine, and revealed that she had some “healing” conversations with former cast mates after the accusations came out. “I did a lot of personal reach-outs,” the mom-of-one said. “The most important thing was for everybody to just take a step back. More than anything, I’m so grateful to have this opportunity to apply the things that I’ve learned over the past ten-plus years in a positive way,” she added.