Lea Michele Made A Hilarious TikTok About The Conspiracy She Can’t Read

It looks like Lea Michele has decided to take the “if you can’t beat them, join them” approach to those rumors that she can’t read. Fresh off of joining TikTok, the Funny Girl star lived up to her musical’s name with a video embracing the meme. The hilarious clip won over many commenters, including one who loved to see her “take back [her] power.”

In her second-ever TikTok, Michele perfectly deployed audio from Keeping Up With the Kardashians to comedic effect. She chose a scene in which Kim Kardashian, anxious and still coping after her terrifying Paris robbery, calls Joe Francis from his villa in Mexico to get reassurance that she’ll be safe there. “Hey. … It’s amazing, but can you talk for a sec?” Michele mouths to Kardashian’s audio, as the screen shows, “Calling Jonathan to read me the comments on my first TikTok.” Her caption is simply, “lol” alongside three emojis — which is also fitting since the meme theorizes that she can’t read or write.

“SHE’S SELF AWARE,” one amused viewer wrote. Another commented, “LEA THIS IS WHAT THE PEOPLE WANTED THANK YOU!!!!” Still another told her, “This just made me like you 100% more,” with a face-with-tears-of-joy emoji. Many others were “screaming” and couldn’t believe she went there.

Michele was initially not so thrilled about the reading conspiracy. It began in 2017 when, during an episode of the One More Thing podcast, hosts Jaye Hunt and Robert Ackerman joked that she never learned to read based on her late Glee co-star Naya Rivera’s assertion that she refused to improvise scenes with Tom Conway. It grew from there as they later looked at all of the “evidence” in a 40-minute Facebook Live, and eventually became a full-on meme. Joke or not, though, Michele recently described it as “sad” during a New York Times interview.

“I went to Glee every single day; I knew my lines every single day,” she told the outlet. “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.”

Michele’s succinct caption didn’t explain what prompted her change of mindset, but the TikTok seems like a good way to put any controversy to bed — and get people excited about her account and current Broadway turn. The star’s only other video (so far) shows her singing a “duet” with TikToker Javi Rodriguez, who had shared a video of him reenacting her Funny Girl opening night. Since she came down with COVID-19 soon thereafter, it looks like TikTok is a good outlet for her while she waits to get back on the stage.