Lea Michele is replacing Beanie Feldstein in Funny Girl and the memes are out of control

12 July 2022, 12:21

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By Katie Louise Smith

Here's all the funniest memes, reactions and tweets about Lea Michele joining the cast of Funny Girl on Broadway.

Well... it happened. Lea Michele has collected her last Infinity Stone. The former Glee actress will officially be stepping into the role of Fanny Brice in the Broadway production of Funny Girl, fulfilling Rachel Berry’s lifelong dream – and the internet has started to spiral.

In case you haven’t been keeping up with the latest Broadway drama, allow us to quickly fill you in: In April 2022, the Funny Girl revival opened on Broadway with Booksmart icon Beanie Feldstein in the leading role. It was a genius casting, but the reviews were unfortunately less than favourable. Sad!

Flashforward to July 2022, it’s announced that Beanie and Jane Lynch (who plays Fanny’s mother in the show), would be leaving the production in September. However, Beanie shocked fans when she announced that she’d be stepping away from the show much earlier than planned, due to “production deciding to take the show in a different direction”. Drama!

Then, Funny Girl’s Twitter account began teasing “exciting casting announcements” and it quickly became very apparent what was about to happen next: Lea Michele.

And as the internet predicted, Lea will now be replacing Beanie as Fanny Brice. In a statement shared on Instagram, Lea wrote: “A dream come true is an understatement. I’m so incredibly honored to join this amazing cast and production and return to the stage playing Fanny Brice on Broadway.”

READ MORE: Lea Michele once showed Jonathan Groff her vagina because he'd never seen one before

Of course, this wild turn of events has now sent Twitter into an absolute meltdown and the memes about Lea, Rachel Berry, Jane Lynch and everything in between are absolutely out of control...

And due to the controversy surrounding Lea and her past behaviour and alleged treatment of her former Glee co-stars on set, some people had their reservations about her taking on the role.

Any Glee fan will instantly realise just how wild this casting actually is.

On Glee, Lea’s character Rachel Berry was a huge Barbra Streisand stan and Funny Girl enthusiast. She performed several tracks from Funny Girl on the show (including the banger, ‘Don’t Rain On My Parade’, which actually was kind of incredible, to be fair), and in season 5, she even ended winning the role of Fanny Brice on Broadway.

Lea herself has also been vying to play Fanny Brice for a while now, too. Back in 2017, she revealed to Andy Cohen that she and Ryan Murphy had talked about doing a Funny Girl movie, but later decided that it “felt like a little soon” after she had performed so many Funny Girl songs on Glee.

And now, of course, everyone is making the same Glee jokes... Particularly about Jane Lynch's Sue Sylvester.

Jane Lynch is currently playing Rose Brice, Fanny's mother, in the Broadway production, but will be leaving just before Lea takes over as Fanny. Fans can't help but laugh at the coincidence of Sue also leaving the theatre as Rachel is performing.

Aaaaaand that's what you missed on Glee!

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