Interview: Lea Michele, Aaron Tveit, and Nicholas Christopher Make Their Moves in Chess

Lea Michele, Aaron Tveit, and Nicholas Christopher are stepping into one of the theater’s most ambitious musicals: Chess, newly reimagined by Emmy-winning writer Danny Strong and Tony-winning director Michael Mayer. With music by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus of ABBA and lyrics by Tim Rice, Chess first premiered in London’s West End in 1986, with a sweeping pop-rock score and intricate love triangle set against a Cold War chess championship. The musical arrived on Broadway in 1988 and quickly closed, but has since developed a devoted following for its powerhouse score, including “Nobody’s Side,” “Anthem,” and the eternal pop hit, “One Night in Bangkok.”

In this new production, Strong and Mayer bring fresh clarity and emotional depth to a story about genius, ambition, and competition. Tveit is Freddie, the American champion unraveling under pressure; Christopher is Anatoly, the Russian grandmaster who has everything and nothing; and Michele is Florence, who is torn between loyalty and love.

Together, they’re tackling a most-demanding score, while finding new life in a show that has always been on the sidelines.

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

How’s the game going?
Lea Michele: The game’s going.

Nicholas Christopher: You know what? It’s actually going really well. Normally, during this time in the process, I go through a huge fit of self-loathing, and it’s not as bad this time. It’s still there, but it’s more of a whisper than a scream.

Lea: It’s incredible to have support. I haven’t had that in a really long time. I’ll go home nad text both of these guys whether they want to hear from me or not, just being, like, “How do you feel?”

Aaron Tveit: From day one, we all recognized that everyone was there to work as hard as they could. When that happens, it takes the pressure off you individually to know that you can do your job and don’t have to do other people’s jobs, as well. I think everyone in the room has felt that way.

People know a lot of the songs, and how the styles of music within the score differ from number to number. Is it a hard sing?
Lea: This is so hard. It’s hard because of the different styles of singing that I have to do within the course of the show. If I had to compare it to something, it’s like Rent. I’ll be in a scene with Aaron singing a pop-rock theater score, and then I will literally exit the stage, go upstairs, and I’m in a scene with Nick and I’m doing Broadway lyric soprano. That’s exciting, and it’s hard. The range of styles throughout the night is what makes this challenging.

Aaron: I feel like I’m at a 12 the whole show, screaming into his face, and then in the second act, I have to be at 15, singing to the world. It’s tricky.

Nick: I thought I was coming in to sing the baritone part, and they got me up here singing to the stratosphere.

Aaron: But the music is so amazing. What’s interesting, too, is that, as in good musicals, all the emotional storytelling is conveyed with the music, and this music people already have an attachment to. That’s our ace in the hole. People already have an emotional response to hearing these songs, and hopefully, when we’re putting them forward within the course of the story, they all work for our emotional journeys.

Nick: When it’s activated by the text, you’re not thinking about how you sound, so you can really lean into the emotion of it. You can start the show and ride the wave.

How do the characters operate in this version of the show?
Lea: We got to do some work over the summer with Danny and Michael where we were able to take this version and bring our voices into it.

Aaron: What’s fascinating about what Danny and Michael have done, and what Lea and Nick were just talking about, is that all of us have real arcs in the show now. We can just go on the ride and not have to manufacture things. The story is specific and coherent, and audiences are going to be able to place themselves in the characters and understand their decisions. Freddie is the current U.S. Chess World Champion, and he’s dealing with severe mental health issues and a childhood that destroyed him. Everything is crumbling around him, and much of that is his own fault, so a reckoning really occurs.

Nick: I play Anatoly, the Russian, who both benefits from the system that he’s in and is a victim of it. He is rich, he wants for nothing, has a wife and children, and at the same time, he’s been robbed of his agency and ideology. My journey is a story of Anatoly finding out who he is and having the courage to then go forward.

Lea: And Florence, who is Freddie’s second coach, slash more, is caught in between these two challengers. Being a woman, playing a woman, in a man’s world, I’m trying to figure out who she is and find her strength and vulnerability at the same time, while trying to make her more than just, sorry for the pun, the pawn between the two of them.

Can you actually play chess in real life?
Aaron: My grandmother taught me how to play chess, checkers, poker, all these card games when I was very young. I played a lot of chess and then I didn’t play for many years. I’m not good by any means. I have friends that are very, very good.

Lea: You play poker?

Aaron: Yeah.

Lea: Like, well?

Aaron: Yeah. I play a lot of poker. But it’s been fun to return to chess after not playing for many years.

Nick: Chess is addicting because you can never master it. As soon as you feel like there’s a pattern, somebody shakes it up. It’s very similar to acting. There’s a structure involved, but you find freedom within the structure depending on who’s sitting across the table from you and then you adapt. The structure is the script. We set up the blocking. And then, whatever Lea or Aaron’s giving, you adapt.

Lea: Luckily, playing or not won’t prevent us from doing a really great job in this show and making people happy and giving them their money’s worth. [Laughs]