Lea Michele and Jonathan Groff were once reminiscing about their mutual big break on Broadway's original production of Spring Awakening in 2006.
Leah was 19 and Jonathan 21 when they starred in the show as romantic leads. If you know anything about the show, you know it involves a lot of teen sexual discovery, so the two spent a fair amount of their time as Wendla and Melchior hooking up.
The original show's 15th anniversary is celebrated in HBO's new documentary, Spring Awakening: Those You've Known. In the documentary, Lea and Jonathan opened up about just how close they got.
While there was a lot of discovery going on onstage, it trickled off as well. At the time, Jonathan was closeted and worried his performance would suffer for it.
"Lea and I were given this material where we had to fall in love, but the first thing I felt was, 'They're going to know I'm gay. [Expletive]! I never had sex with a girl," he recalled.
"I'm in the closet."
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"Jonathan and I became so close. We were so intertwined," Lea said of the experience during production. Both were early in their careers and found themselves in a show that involved partial nudity and intimate scenes.
At one point, Lea said, "I literally showed him my whole vagina."
"I can confirm that," Jonathan said.
"He was like, 'I've never seen a woman's vagina before. Would you show me?'" she recalled.
"I was like, 'Sure.' And I took a desk lamp … and showed him. That's how close we are. But I've never seen Jonathan naked. I've never seen his penis."
Lea chatted about the documentary with People and shared her gratitude for the relationship she forged with Jonathan as they shared the stage.
"I'm so grateful that we connected in the way that we did so that we were then able to go on the stage and then have that level of trust," she said.
"If we didn't, I think it would've been really impossible and just so challenging to have to tackle that material every night with someone that you don't feel that safety and trust with," she continued.
"We had to be in love, and it just so happened that we met to do this show, but I feel like we would've met some way or another in life. Because we were meant to be in each other's lives."
"I felt so safe with him every night. And it was hard doing those scenes, [including] the beating scene. I talk about it in the documentary," Lea continued.
"The character of Wendla was such an honor to play and as an actor, this is such great material, but it's still hard to have to go there every night, and I couldn't have done it if it wasn't for Jonathan."
