Jonathan Groff gushed over the “surreal” experience seeing his best friend Lea Michele go through her second pregnancy.
“Her last pregnancy, it was [during] Covid,” Groff, 39, recalled exclusively to Us Weekly on Monday, June 3, while attending the Advocate + Out Magazine Pride Cover Launch sponsored by Hornitos Tequila in New York City. “She was in L.A., I was in Pennsylvania, mostly in Berlin, shooting The Matrix. And so I never saw her pregnant for her whole first pregnancy.”
Groff, who has been close with Michele, 37, since working together on Broadway’s Spring Awakening in 2006, is happy he gets to “see every stage of it” this time around.
“I just felt the baby kick for the first time last week. It’s very exciting,” Groff revealed.
The actor, who also starred on Glee with Michele from 2010 to 2015, said that Michele “looks so great” while carrying her second child.
“She is leading with pregnant, so it’s not the same Lea. It’s, like, giving pregnant,” Groff said of her body transformation, noting that Michele still has such a “tiny, small frame.”
Outside of Michele’s physical change, Groff told Us that his BFF has leaned into parenthood. “She’s an amazing mom,” he said. “I’m excited for her to have another one.”
Michele announced in March that she and husband Zandy Reich are expecting their second baby. The couple, who tied the knot in 2019, welcomed their first child, son Ever, in August 2020.
“Mommy, Daddy and Ever are overjoyed,” she captioned an Instagram photo of her bare belly at the time.
Two months later, Michele revealed that the sex of their newest edition is a girl. “The most beautiful Mother’s Day today, holding my son who made me a mama … and carrying my daughter,” she captioned a social media photo cradling her baby bump in May.
While Groff couldn’t be happier for Michele’s family expansion, the Scream Queens alum is equally excited for whatever Groff’s future holds. In fact, Michele revealed in April 2022 that if Groff wants to be a dad someday, she’ll be his surrogate.
“I’ll carry your baby. I will,” Michele told Groff during an interview with People, to which he replied, “You will?”
Michele was totally on board, responding, “Hell yeah! I love being pregnant. It’s so much fun.” Groff played coy about whether he wants kids but added that it was “good to know” Michele had his back.
Groff, who publicly came out as gay in 2009, does, however, know that working on Spring Awakening in the early 2000s was exactly what he needed to become his authentic self.
“Theater saved me. Looking back, I didn’t realize it was saving me,” Groff told Us on Monday. “When I was kind of ignorant too — I was so compartmentalized and so closeted that I didn’t realize at the time what [a] lifeline getting to sing and dance and emote and cry and be joyful at all of that was when I was that age.”
With reporting by Travis Cronin
