The actress shares that Streisand reached out to her months after she took on the role of Fanny Brice.
No one's going to rain on Lea Michele's parade! The 36-year-old actress is currently playing Fanny Brice in the Broadway revival of Funny Girl, a role originated by Barbra Streisand in 1964.
Michele, who has a long history of performing songs from Funny Girl on Glee and beyond, shares what 80-year-old Streisand thought of her performance.
"It was so surreal and such a wonderful moment. The fact that she acknowledged my performance -- I could cry. I called Jonathan [Groff] and Ryan Murphy sobbing," she tells Town & Country magazine. "It was a beautiful, handwritten note that I will cherish. She was incredibly complimentary. It exists. It happened, and now I feel like so many dreams can come true."
As for Streisand's suggestion in the note that she direct Michele in a Funny Girl movie remake, the Glee alum reacts, "I hadn’t thought about that yet, but now you’ve placed it in the universe..."
Michele also talked about Streisand's message during Monday's episode of Late Night With Seth Meyers.
"Oh my god, I did, I finally heard from Barbra," Michele shared. "I got to work the other day and my dresser... had this gold envelope. It was like, I don't know, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory getting invited. I would think it would arrive on doves."
Meyers asked of the envelope, "Heavy, was there weight to it?"
"No, it was light as a featha'," Michele quipped, imitating Streisand's accent.
She added that she "just knew" the letter was from the legendary singer.
"It was very sweet, she wrote me this beautiful letter," Michele said. "One thing she said in it, she was like, 'It's really wonderful when your dreams come true, isn't it?' And I fell to my knees. I called Ryan Murphy, my mom, Jonathan Groff, and [director] Michael Mayer. I was like, 'These are the people who need to know.'"
Michele's euphoric moment was short-lived due to a terrifying intrusive thought.
"Then I got a little nervous because I was like, 'Wait a second, how do I know that this is not fake? That some person is just playing the worst prank on me in the entire world?'" she said.
Luckily her co-star, Ramin Karimloo, who has worked with Streisand before, had previously received a letter from the Oscar winner.
"I snuck into his room, found his copy of his letter and just made sure the writing was the same. And it was, so that was all I needed," Michele said, laughing.
In addition to Streisand's praise, Michele also got star struck by a famous face she saw in the audience recently.
"Nicole Kidman was there the other night and I saw her and I froze," Michele admitted. "I got nervous for like a second, and then I was like, 'OK.' But it's so great because it's super interactive."
Michele took over the role of Fanny Brice from actress Beanie Feldstein, who exited the show in July.
Back in September 2021, Feldstein told ET that she had not spoken to Streisand about taking on the role.
"In my dreams, sure!" Feldstein said of her hopes of speaking to Streisand.
Feldstein announced in July that she was exiting the production.
“Playing Fanny Brice on Broadway has been a lifelong dream of mine, and doing so for the last few months has been a great joy and true honor," Feldstein wrote at the time. "Once the production decided to take the show in a different direction, I made the extremely difficult decision to step away sooner than anticipated."
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