Alex Newell

Alex Eugene Newell, born August 20, 1992, in Lynn, Massachusetts, is an American actor and singer who has worked across television, music, and Broadway. Newell's father, a deacon, died of cancer when they were six years old, and they were subsequently raised by their mother. Newell attended Kipp Lynn Academy for four years before graduating from Bishop Fenwick High School in 2012, where they participated in the school choir, improv club, and costume club. Outside of school, Newell sang in the choir at Zion Baptist Church in Lynn and later directed the youth choir there. Newell received no formal voice training before their professional career and has cited Donna Summer, Sylvester, Diana Ross, Aretha Franklin, Chaka Khan, and Beyoncé as musical influences.

Newell's professional career began in 2011 when they submitted an audition video for the first season of Oxygen's The Glee Project, a competition that drew approximately 34,000 submissions. The self-taped audition accumulated over one million views on MySpace and secured Newell a place among the twelve finalists competing for a seven-episode arc on the Fox series Glee. Newell finished as the show's first runner-up, but the producers invited them to appear in two episodes regardless. Their first appearance came in the third-season episode "Saturday Night Glee-ver," in which they played Wade "Unique" Adams, a transgender teenager who expressed their female identity through the alter ego Unique. The character was among the most visible transgender figures in network prime-time television at the time. Newell was asked to rejoin the cast for the fourth season, forgoing an acceptance to Berklee College of Music to do so, and was promoted to main cast status for the fifth season due to the character's popularity. In the sixth and final season, Newell appeared as a recurring guest star, with a notable moment being their performance of "I Know Where I've Been" from Hairspray alongside a Transpersons Choir of 200 performers. Along with the rest of the Glee cast, Newell received a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series in 2012.

Alongside their television work, Newell pursued a music career. They signed with Big Beat Records in October 2013 and released a debut single, a cover of Sigma's "Nobody to Love," on June 3, 2014. In 2015, Newell contributed feature vocals to Clean Bandit's re-issued version of "Stronger" and collaborated with British electro duo Blonde on the single "All Cried Out." They also worked with American electro duo The Knocks on "Collect My Love," which appeared on The Knocks' debut album 55, released in March 2016. In January 2016, Newell released the original track "This Ain't Over," the lead single from their debut extended play Power, which featured production from Diane Warren, Nile Rodgers, MNEK, and DJ Cassidy and was released February 19, 2016, through Big Beat Records. That April, Newell released "Kill the Lights," a collaboration with DJ Cassidy and Nile Rodgers, through Atlantic Records. Newell also performed at events including the Coachella Festival, the Governors Ball Music Festival, and BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend, as well as numerous LGBT pride festivals.

Newell made their Broadway debut in 2017 in the revival of Once on This Island, playing the role of Asaka at the Circle in the Square Theatre. The production ran through 2018. In 2019, Newell joined the cast of NBC's musical dramedy Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist as Mo, a genderfluid DJ and next-door neighbor to the show's protagonist. The series ran for two seasons before NBC canceled it in June 2021. In December 2021, The Roku Channel released Zoey's Extraordinary Christmas, a two-hour holiday film that concluded the series' story, with Newell reprising the role of Mo.

In 2023, Newell appeared in the musical comedy Shucked at the Nederlander Theatre on Broadway, playing the role of Lulu. The production opened April 4, 2023, and ran through January 14, 2024. For that performance, Newell won the 2023 Tony Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical at the 76th Tony Awards, as well as the 2023 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Performance in a Musical. Newell and J. Harrison Ghee, nominated the same year for Some Like It Hot, were the first openly non-binary actors to be nominated for and win the Tony Award. Newell's Broadway credits also include A Christmas Carol and the play Chicago.