>On any given day you enter the world that is Ellen’s Stardust Diner, a Times Square staple since 1987 and the “Home of the Original World-Famous Singing Waitstaff,” you can feel the chaos. You can feel the hunger of diner-goers after waiting in a line that wraps around the side of the building, and of the Broadway hopefuls that make up a majority of the singing wait staff. I took a trip back to the diner after a decade away, returning now as a journalist, rather than a young girl cosplaying tourists with her family from Westchester County. I was there to see Alexis Brodman, a waitress and 26-year-old content creator who’s branded herself as “the real life Rachel Berry” on TikTok — a reference to the character from FOX’s hit high school musical comedy series Glee, played by Lea Michele, with a driven personality and ambitions of a career on Broadway.
I climbed up the stairs to the mezzanine, eager to meet Alexis, whose love and obsession for Glee has become the through-line of her career. After months of phone and Zoom calls, it was hard to make sense of the fact that we’ve never been in the same room. It was like meeting a celebrity: someone you always see online, someone you feel like you really know. We locked eyes almost immediately, and she came rushing over from her section of tables. “You’re short in person,” she said to me. I knew I was in for a show.
At six years old, Alexis visited New York City for the first time. She was your average school-aged girl, with brown hair, a big smile and hazel eyes. She and her family, which includes her father, mother and older brother from Coconut Creek, Florida, ventured to Times Square, where they stopped at Ellen’s. The location, which inspired the Spotlight Diner in Glee, would go on to be the place where Alexis would work nearly two decades later to support her goal of making it to Broadway.
Singing for audiences from all over is part of Alexis’ dream — something Ellen’s provides her, in some ways. While she loves to perform, she said that, a lot of the time, it feels like normal work, even if she’s singing and serving coffee at the same time.
“Some days or some hours of the shift I’m just doing my job. It just feels like my job and I’m just getting through the day,” she said. “It’s just become normal, and when I do get in a negative headspace at work, sometimes I have to take a step back and remind myself this is special. Because I’m surrounded by so many people who are doing the same exact thing as me, it doesn’t feel special.”
On super busy days, she channels her inner Rachel Berry to keep her sustained. “It’s a mindset. A lot of the time, I have to reel myself back in and say, ‘what would Rachel Berry do?’” Alexis told me. “If I’m having self doubt, if I don’t want to go out and audition, if I don’t want to film something, if I don’t want to post something, if I don’t feel like going to the gym. I would just ask myself, ‘what would Rachel Berry do?’ That’s really what the real life Rachel Berry means to me.”
Alexis remembered how, when the show was on the air from 2009-15, her middle school classmates would compare her to Berry. She said, “It was like a double edged sword.” On one hand, she saw the comparisons as a compliment, meaning maybe she was as talented as Michele. But on the other hand, she wondered if it was an insult. “Nobody likes her,” Alexis said of the fictional character. “People are always making fun of her on the show.”
Whatever the reason was then, it doesn’t really matter now to Alexis, who has nonetheless leaned into “the real-life Rachel Berry” brand, amassing more than 60,000 followers and six million likes on TikTok in the process.
But now, Alexis Brodman is setting the record straight. She remembers former classmates who pinged her as a superfan of Lea Michele, who has received public criticism from former Glee colleagues for her on-set behaviors, which some went so far as to call “bullying”. Alexis said she’s never claimed to idolize the controversial actress. Rather, she is just a “gleek” — the term coined by the Glee fandom — and a fan of the fictional character’s trajectory.
“I’m going to own this. I am going to take something that people were using as an insult, or that I thought was an insult, and I’m going to turn it into a brand,” she said. “It’s a business. It’s a strategy, and I understand that, and I’m still learning.”
Alexis is just one of thousands of artists who move to New York City with a dream of becoming a Broadway star. The aspiring theater actor moved from Florida three years ago, and in 2022 began working on the singing wait staff at Ellen’s. Lisa Asher, an emcee at Ellen’s, said during my visit to the diner in April that three members left in the month of March to perform in Broadway shows, including “Wicked,” “Hell’s Kitchen,” and “The Who’s Tommy.” Talent is constantly on display at the diner, itself a stepping stone to a professional career. Of Alexis, Asher said she “is someone who came in and who has grown and blossomed the longer that she’s here.”
Forrest Davis, Alexis’ best friend and roommate of about a year, met her in an astronomy class during their senior year at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School (they graduated in 2016, before the February 2018 mass shooting that killed 17 people and injured 17 others). “I don’t know how we picked each other to be lab partners in that class,” Forrest remembered. “We just instantly clicked, we’re like OK, we’re going to be best friends.”
Davis spends a lot of time with Alexis. Not only are they best friends and roommates, but also coworkers. Davis does not sing, but he is a host at Ellen’s. While referring to the amount of time they spend together as a “double-edged sword,” he also said his disinterest in musical theater works in their favor.
“I’m a pretty competitive person, so if I was natured towards liking Glee and being musical theater-inspired, I feel like I might be a little jaded, just because I would be a little jealous of how great she is,” said Davis, who graduated from Florida Atlantic University in 2020 with a degree in studio art. “If I were obsessed with Glee I feel like we would definitely have tiffs, or little moments where we would get jealous of each other.”
As Davis has grown into adulthood with Alexis, he’s had a unique lens into who she really is, not just how she’s perceived online.
“In high school, we always talked about going to New York City, and her being a Broadway star and being here now, she’s so close to that moment I could almost taste it for her,” he said. “She’s made so many goals as her younger self that she’s hitting now that I don’t even think she realizes how many of these goals she’s made and hit.”
While working at the diner and channeling her inner Rachel Berry online, Alexis can also be found singing across the tristate area — at Rutgers University performing the National Anthem for men’s basketball games, at the cabaret club 54 Below belting tunes featured on Glee, at Green Room 42 or, more recently, in Times Square at the Rise NY Torch Series this past April.
Alexis was 11 when she and her father, Andy, a sales representative, were flipping through the channels of the television when they stumbled upon the pilot of Glee. The music drew the father daughter duo in, and as each new episode was released, Alexis followed along in real time, finding 12 best friends in the characters that sang and danced onscreen each week. “I always knew I could go home at the end of a bad day and put the TV on and sing along with these kids,” she said.
Starting from when she was 12, her mother Jessica, an office administrator, had bought her Glee memorabilia and merchandise that accumulated into a pretty solid collection.
“My mom was a huge fan girl when she was a kid,” Alexis said. “If I was ever into anything, she made sure I got to experience it to the fullest, so she would buy me everything from Glee, anything that she saw, she would get it.”
Alexis found a community of “gleeks” online. “Wait a second, nobody is more of a ‘gleek’ than I am, so I decided to just post my collection and it went crazy,” she said.
She continued to collect more items — commodities she found on eBay or other websites and made a social media series out of it. She’s met some of her best friends, like Vanesa Bilijana, 24, on TikTok from a shared love for Glee.
“I’ve never befriended anybody online,” Bilijana, who is from and currently lives in Chicago, said. “I credit Glee with my friendship with Alexis, one thousand percent. If I had never watched Glee, I would have never been friends with Alexis.”
Bilijana, who watched the entirety of Glee in eight days during March 2020, said becoming friends with Alexis in real life has opened her up to a person behind a brand. She said when she had the chance to come to New York from Chicago in May 2021, a year after connecting online, it was like they knew each other their entire lives.
“I think Rachel and Alexis have the same kind of ambition and vision for their future that’s so clear, which takes a lot of confidence,” she said. “I think those people that don’t see it, I think they’re just judging a book by its cover. I don’t think they’re opening their minds up and just associating something that they deem as negative and annoying, but I just think it’s about your perspective … you gotta do what you got to do to get what you want. And that’s truly manifested in her real life, she’s proven time and time again that her drive and her ambition is an attribute and not a detriment.”
It isn’t hard to find people at the diner who can speak to Alexis’ character — her literal character and the character that she’s chosen to use as the base for her online presence. Adam Cavalieri is one singing waiter who has come to know Alexis at Ellen’s.
Alexis and Cavalieri share the same zodiac sign — they’re both Cancers, something Cavalieri said was a bonding factor early on. “We talked about friendships, and how Cancers are very into friendship, and we’re serious about how we connect with people,” Cavalieri told me.
Cavalieri, a Glee fan himself, praised Alexis’ online brand, and said it is a strategic way for her to share not just her talents, but who she really is. “She is living the life of Rachel Berry. She’s working at the diner that she worked at,” Cavalieri said. “I don’t think she is her because she’s much sweeter than Rachel Berry.”
Another Ellen’s employee, Isaiah Rosales, has watched Alexis in action. He said her collaborative nature and fun personality adds a freshness around the diner. “Whenever I see her, she has three different ideas for a TikTok at the very least,” Rosales said. “Whenever she’s making content, it’s ‘what do you think about this? How can I make this better? Would you do this? Do you have any ideas?’ Which is super fun and cute, and it adds a new, fun vibe.”
Rosales said filming with Alexis and engaging with her social media content always adds a positive spin to a busy shift. Sometimes Rosales will chaotically photobomb the shot, and Alexis will get a new idea. They’ll reposition and reshoot the video. “I think it is just so much fun to have that outlet during a crazy shift where people are screaming at us for ranch and we’re just like, one second, let us have fun,” he said. “It’s really cool, and I think the customers really enjoy watching it too because I know some of the customers definitely know who she is, they follow her.”
Her favorite character was actually never Rachel— rather, it was Kurt, portrayed by Chris Colfer, and his romantic partner, Blaine Anderson, portrayed by Darren Criss, who kept her interested in the plot of the show. But the similar drive and work ethic Alexis had to Rachel Berry led her to branding herself online in that way.
“I am so grateful that I do social media,” she said. “Every opportunity I get, my social media [presence] grows. When my social media [presence] grows, I get another opportunity. So to me, it’s going hand in hand and I truly feel like my path is going to be created by me. Not necessarily that I’m going to create musicals and shows, I think I’m gonna get opportunities because I put myself out there in ways that I don’t think other people do.”
Brodman’s parents, who still live in Florida, are confident that success is within her grasp, and told me she is nearer to the spotlight than she may even realize.
“I think too many people are talented and for one reason or another stopped doing what they really want to do and then 10 years down the line they regret quitting,” Andy said. “When you go after your dream you’re not going to be ever working again, you’re going to do what you love to do all the time. The money will come when you chase your dream because then all of a sudden, you’re living your dream.”
Jessica said it is her dream for both her children to do whatever makes them happy, and that she’ll support them in anything they pursue. For Alexis, that’s performing, and her parents beam with pride looking back on her growth.
“I love it. That’s my daughter. That’s my girl, look at her,” Andy said of Alexis when she’s performing. “Just seeing how happy she is performing makes it even more satisfying… seeing how she enjoys it makes it all worthwhile.”
The Rachel Berry mindset Alexis has adopted tells her she’ll make it to Broadway. But sometimes she doesn’t feel so confident. While she works and waits for that once in a lifetime call, she’ll continue to think about what Rachel Berry would do.
She doesn’t see herself being the brand forever, but the mindset isn’t going anywhere.
“She is so sure of herself and her talents and her abilities, she doesn’t have time to doubt herself and I doubt myself quite a bit,” Alexis said. “In order to be successful, you have to make the hard decisions. And that’s what Rachel Berry would do.”
Alexis was just a young girl, discovering her own voice when she gazed up at the world famous singing wait staff, never expecting that one day she’d be the server admired by thousands each day. Heads turned and phones were in the air recording Alexis belting out “Greatest Star,” a song from the Broadway musical “Funny Girl.” She can’t help but smile at me, living the dream.