Who is Alex Newell? Non-binary Glee star wins Tony Award
History has been made after Alex Newell is the first non-binary actor to win a Tony Award at the event that ran this year for the 76th time.
Newell took home the Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical category award for their role as Lulu in Shucked.
They made reference to their background while accepting the award: “Thank you for seeing me Broadway. I should not be up here as a queer, non-binary, fat, Black, little baby from Massachusetts. And to anyone that thinks that they can’t do it, I’m going to look you dead in your face that you can do anything you put your mind to.”
J. Harrison Ghee also won lead actor (musical) for their performance as Jerry/Daphne in Casey Nicholaw’s Some Like It Hot, which made both Ghee and Newell the first non-binary people to win Tony Awards.
Who is Alex Newell and what else have they starred in?
Born in 1992, Alex Newell is both an actor and singer. They grew up in Massachusetts and were raised by their single mother after their father died of cancer when they were six years old.
Newell comes from a musical background and was involved in their school’s choir, improv club, costume club, church choir all throughout high school. Despite this, they didn’t receive any professional voice coaching until they landed their role in hit musical drama Glee.
In 2011, their audition tape for The Glee Project, competing for a seven-episode arc on Glee gained huge traction, earning them over one million MySpace views and a spot. They also came out as gay during the audition. Newell ended up becoming the series’ runner-up, but the producers took a liking to them and offered them a spot in one of the third season episodes titled "Saturday Night Glee-ver". They played a transgender teenager who was assigned male at birth.
Newell moved to LA to be on Glee after being asked to rejoin the cast for the fourth series.
Throughout their musical career, they have sung at Coachella, the Governors Ball Music Festival, BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend and many LGBT events and pride festivals such as the pride parade in Boston.
Their debut single, after they were signed to Big Beat Records in 2013 was a cover of Sigma’s "Nobody to Love", released in 2014. They also featured on a remix of Robin S.’s single "Show Me Love" and supported glee colleague Adam Lambert on tour in 2016.
Newell is passionate about helping other LGBT youth and has performed for The Trevor Project, the Human Rights Campaign, Jack Antonoff’s Ally Coalition and other fundraisers.
