Lea Michele is living up to the name “Funny Girl.” While taking time off from her run as Fanny Brice in Broadway’s revival of Funny Girl to recover from COVID-19, the 36-year-old vocalist posted a TikTok Monday (Sept. 19) poking fun at online rumors she’s illiterate by lip-syncing to a viral Keeping Up With The Kardashians sound bite.
In the video, Michele pretends to talk on the phone with a friend while looking slightly stressed — recreating a scene from KUWTK in which Kim Kardashian calls her pal Joe Francis with concerns she isn’t safe while vacationing in Mexico.
“Hi, how is it?” says Francis’ voice on the other end of the line, to which Lea, mouthing along to Kim’s response, tearfully replies, “It’s amazing, but wait, can you talk for a sec?”
“Calling Jonathan to read me the comments on my first TikTok,” she captioned the video, most likely referencing her close friend and former Glee costar Jonathan Groff.
The TikTok — Michele’s second one after joining the platform and posting her first video a day prior — is a clear nod to bizarre but persistent social media rumors that she can’t read or write, gossip that first arose in 2018 and resurfaced after the actress was cast as Beanie Feldstein’s controversial replacement in Funny Girl. The former Spring Awakening star previously addressed the rumors in a recent New York Times profile, during which she also spoke up about past allegations of her poor behavior on the set of Glee.
“I went to Glee every single day; I knew my lines every single day,” she told the newspaper. “And then there’s a rumor online that I can’t read or write? It’s sad. It really is. I think often if I were a man, a lot of this wouldn’t be the case.”
Watch Lea Michele joke about rumors she’s illiterate in her hilarious new TikTok below:
