Who replaced Beanie Feldstein in Funny Girl?
BROADWAY’S Funny Girl welcomes a new cast member to replace Beanie Feldstein who will leave the show on July 31, 2022.
Feldstein’s departure comes two months earlier than anticipated, with her original final show set to take place on September 25.
Who replaced Beanie Feldstein in Funny Girl?
Beanie Feldstein’s character, Fanny Brice, will be replaced by Lea Michele, who starred in the TV series, Glee.
Michele was eight years old when she got her first break on Broadway for the role of young Cosette in the acclaimed story, Les Misérables.
She went on to appear in Fiddler on the Roof and Spring Awakening but didn’t become a household name until 2009 when she starred as Rachel Berry on Glee.
Now making the move to Funny Girl, Michele’s success and her new take on Brice’s character was announced as producers work to increase ticket sales following a drop in attendance.
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Deadline reported Funny Girl regularly reached $1million in weekly box office sales from their Spring shows, but a lack of award nominations has resulted in a 25 percent decrease on July 3.
Michele seemingly fits producers’ needs with 11 wins and 28 nominations for awards including the Golden Globe Awards, the Screen Actor’s Guild Awards, the People’s Choice Awards, and the Gold Derby Awards.
Has Lea Michele always wanted to star in Funny Girl?
Michele first spoke about wanting to be cast in a reprisal of Funny Girl, the play that launched Barbara Streisand’s career, in 2014.
“Ryan [Murphy] has the rights [to the musical], and it’s something that we’d both, I think, would really like to do,” Playbill reported Michele said in an interview with Andy Cohen.
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She continued, “… We’ve had some really exciting first meetings with a really fabulous director that we think would be really wonderful.”
When Feldstein was cast in the role of Fanny Brice in April 2022, Michele began trending on Twitter.
In an interview with Andy Cohen, Feldstein said she “didn’t understand.”
She continued, saying, “[Michele] very sweetly wrote on my Instagram,” adding, “I don’t know the woman whatsoever.”
Why did Beanie Feldstein leave Funny Girl?
Feldstein announced she would be leaving her role in Funny Girl three months after she stepped on the stage.
The producers said they were “blindsided” by her decision to post the news that she would be leaving the show on Instagram on July 10.
A source told PageSix that the producers were planning on making an announcement on July 11, but they were surprised that Feldstein posted the news immediately.
“She clearly doesn’t give a s**t,” the source said.
In her post, Feldstein wrote, “Playing Fannie 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.”
She continued, “Once the production decided to take the show in a different direction, I made the extremely difficult decision to step away sooner than anticipated.
“The people I have had the great joy of bringing Funny Girl to life with every single night, both on and off the stage, are all remarkably talented and exceptional humans and I hope you continue to join them on Henry Street after I depart on July 31st.”