For Aaron Tveit, Lea Michele & Nicholas Christopher, Chess Is No Longer Someone Else's Story

In the midst of a punishing winter, the Cold War-era musical Chess has been heating up Broadway with an East-West love triangle comprised of Tony winner Aaron Tveit, Lea Michele and Nicholas Christopher. The trio of stars sat down with Broadway.com Editor-in-Chief Paul Wontorek at Rockefeller Center's swanky Pebble Bar to talk about the long-awaited revival and their respective relationships to the material. Afterwards, they cozied up in a corner of the bar for an intimate photoshoot evoking the sleek, neon-tinted world they inhabit on stage. 

Chess has the reputation of being a challenging work to stage, having been tinkered with to varying degrees in the years since its 1986 West End opening and subsequent 1988 Broadway run. In this regard, the show bears similarities to Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s famously troubled Merrily We Roll Along, which attained a hard-won triumph in the form of a 2023 Broadway revival more than four decades after it was originally staged. Like the Merrily revival, this iteration of Chess can attribute much of its success to the powerhouse trio leading the cast.

“When I first started listening to the music and when this project was brought to me, for whatever reason, I just saw it so clearly,” says Michele, who plays Florence Vassy, the strong-willed chess second in the middle of the show’s romantic triangle. “It's like how we talk about playing chess in our show. For me I could just see the board. I could read it so clearly and I understood everything about it. Merrily was a very big factor as well. It's so much about having someone bring in a vision, the timing being right and then three people coming together who have a connection in what we can do individually and what we bring together that really allowed all the stars to align for our production.”

Christopher, who plays the disciplined Russian grandmaster Anatoly Sergievsky, was familiar with the song “Anthem” from theater camp, but not much else. “I knew there was some sort of weird classical rock/pop Broadway show out there, but I had no idea," he says. Now fully immersed in the world of Chess, he recognizes the immense power of the score and the story, as well as its continued impact on audiences. "We're seeing parents who had seen one of the 68 shows during the first run on Broadway bringing their kids, or people from London who had seen the original London version coming over and bringing their kids. It really seems like this generational love and passion for this musical is bringing people together, which is so exciting.”

Tveit, who plays the arrogant, short-fused American grandmaster Freddie Trumper, echoes this sentiment. “When people come to the show, I say, ‘Okay, what did you know about Chess?’ It's either nothing or everything, there's nothing in between. So many people have come and said that they saw the [original] show on Broadway. It's incredible that something that ran for seemingly such a short amount of time found this kind of cult following.”

Reflecting on his character’s volatile temperament, Tveit says he's motivated by the humanity underneath. “I'm interested in this guy's mental health state, the idea of trauma and childhood trauma. We live in a day and age where any 11-year-old with a phone can all of the sudden get all this notoriety because they post a video online and a million people watch it. We don't know what the cost of that is going to be in 15 or 20 years. So to think about this guy who was thrust onto the world stage at 11 years old with no support system, no family structure behind him, it started to make sense to me how and why he could become who he is and be in this terrible co-dependent relationship."

This version of Chess features a revised book by Danny Strong. "The three of us had a really intimate experience over the summer with [director] Michael [Mayer] and Danny, where we got to work on these characters and really take the time to develop the dynamics and the relationship and the complexities," Michele shares. "For me, it was so important that Florence not just be this sort of pawn, excuse the pun."

Though all of their characters go through tremendous emotional arcs, Michele concedes that, “Nick wins the crying award. That says a lot, because I usually am the crier. But we have a cry-off at the end of the show.” Adds Tveit, “I’ve been called TT in other shows, for Teary Tveit.” Christopher has a particularly charged moment in the form of “Endgame,” a power ballad he delivers during the climactic chess match. “It feels like a true exploration of self. What I have is the sounds of the incredible voices behind me, the sound of the orchestra and then it's just this sort of void of blackness," he says. "And yet there's the added ingredient to the mix of all of these eyes on you at the same time, where it takes an incredible amount of focus to open yourself up to that, to then be able to share a real piece of myself with the audience every night.”

As evidenced by the incredible amount of belting they each have to do in this show, all three actors have an impressive number of Broadway roles under their belts at this point in their respective careers. But when asked to reflect on the best part of their lives right now, the communal answer had to do with finding balance. "I have a 14-month-old at home, and I just keep thinking about this moment in her life, that I'm getting to do this thing that I love. My world feels so full. I'm home with her and it's amazing and I have this beautiful family that I'm so grateful for, and then I get to go into work. The complements of the two, it's kind of overwhelming," Tveit says.

Michele, who has a 16-month-old and a five-year-old, emphatically agrees. "It's an unbelievable blessing to be able to do what you love and have the support around you of the people that are helping to make that happen, especially as a working mom.” For Christopher, it's refreshingly rare to have only one job, to be able to focus on playing a single character. He doesn't take for granted the fact that, "I get to dedicate my full energy and my full focus to this show and to my family, to my friends."

Chess is running at the Imperial Theatre, where Michele made her Broadway debut at eight years old in Les Misérables. Reflecting on this full-circle moment in her career, she adds: “Every night before I go out, I have a picture of me at eight in my dressing room, and I just feel so grateful to be able to be doing what I love for 30 years now. When I walk out every night and I sing 'Someone Else's Story,' I look at center stage and think, 'I stood there when I was eight.' It's a really unbelievable gift.”

Watch the full interview below!

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