Michele's gleeful awakening

As ambitious glee clubber and social pariah Rachel Berry, Lea Michele has been called RuPaul, taken more than a few fruit slushies to the face in the hallways of McKinley High and tried romancing her teacher by singing Endless Love. The leap into the land of awkward adolescence has been a big one for Michele, the 23-year-old stage actress whose Broadway resume is all serious drama — she's been in the sexually charged Spring Awakening and the tear-jerker Les Misérables.

Who are your comedic influences?

I used to watch Gilda Radner, and I'd always be trying to imitate her when she'd do Roseanne Roseannadanna. I was a really spastic child. It helped that I come from a very colourful Italian family, and they let me be as crazy as I wanted to be. I would sit in front of my mum and play Barbra Streisand or Fran Drescher on a talk show — and I'd play both the host and the guest.

It's funny, though, I've never considered myself a comedic performer, ever. For so many years, I was in Spring Awakening, where my character was beaten every night and then dies of an abortion.

In the vitamin D episode of Glee, it looked like you got to let loose.

Oh, my God. I practiced talking manically for days. I kept thinking, How manic is the right amount of manic? What would Rachel be like on uppers? What would she sound like? It was insane. And then doing the Halo/Walking on Sunshine mash-up in that state? So much fun.

Do you find that there are any similarities between you and Rachel?

I draw a lot of inspiration from myself when I was very young. I was very much like Rachel when I was, like, eight or nine. I always wanted to perform. Every Christmas video is me standing in front of my family singing Santa Baby and putting on a mini-concert for my whole family.

The musical Spring Awakening, about the sexual awakening of teenagers in 19th century Germany, was very much an underdog in its early days. The same can be said of Glee, yet both have become hits.

You never feel like, "Oh, my God, we're a hit!" Being at the Tony Awards, performing on David Letterman, no matter what we did, it never felt like we'd made it. It wasn't until the day of my last performance — when people camped outside for tickets and I got a standing ovation from the entire audience — that I thought, OK, maybe... And it is similar to Glee in that way. We do it because we believe in the show so much, but I still don't think any of us feel how big it's gotten.

You've got a big, all-Madonna episode coming up?

I'm doing six Madonna songs, some of which will be mash-ups. We're doing a lot of her most popular songs but ranging all the way from early Madonna to most recent Madonna.