About Alex Newell
Alex Eugene Newell is an American actor and singer. They are known for their role as Unique Adams on the Fox musical series Glee and Mo on Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist. Newell also starred as Asaka in the Broadway revival of Once on This Island at the Circle in the Square Theatre in 2018. For their role in Shucked, they won the 2023 Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical. They and J. Harrison Ghee were the first openly non-binary actors to be nominated for and win a Tony Award.
As a singer, Newell has released tracks with Clean Bandit, Blonde, and the Knocks.
Newell was born on August 20, 1992, in Lynn, Massachusetts. Their father, a deacon, died of cancer when they were six years old, at which point their mother raised them as a single parent.
After four complete years of education in the first class of Kipp Lynn Academy, Newell moved on to and graduated from Bishop Fenwick High School in 2012, where they were involved in their school's choir, improv club, and costume club; they were also a member of their church choir at Zion Baptist Church in Lynn, Massachusetts while later also directing the youth choir. They never had any formal voice lessons before landing their part on Glee. They have cited Donna Summer, Sylvester, Diana Ross, Aretha Franklin, Chaka Khan, and Beyoncé as their influences.
Newell was among 34,000 to submit an audition video in 2011 for the first season of Oxygen's The Glee Project. Newell's self-taped audition earned them over one million MySpace views as well as a spot among the 12 participants who competed for a seven-episode arc on Glee. During the arc, they asserted themself as an out gay man. Eventually, they became the series’ first runner-up. Nevertheless, the producers were so impressed that they decided to bring them on Glee for two episodes. Newell first appeared on Glee in the third season episode "Saturday Night Glee-ver". They were cast in the role of Wade "Unique" Adams, a transgender teenager who was assigned male at birth. The shy, outcast Wade expressed their female identity through music as the bold, brave alter ego, Unique. Wade broke ground by being one of the most visible transgender characters on television and one of the first on a network prime time show. Newell's performance was described as "bold", with "remarkable restraint and powerful vocals."
On his nightly show, Bill O'Reilly expressed concern that children watching the show unsupervised might be encouraged to experiment with what he termed "alternative lifestyles," which he said the show glorified. Newell commented, "My mother said, 'If Bill O'Reilly said something about you, you are doing something right.' He just showed the public and conservative viewers me. There are more people seeing me now... There are people like Wade and Unique, and being themselves. If kids want to go and do that, that is them expressing who they are." They later appeared in two more episodes and completed their story arc that season.
Newell was accepted into the Berklee College of Music for fall 2012, but decided instead to move to Los Angeles to be on Glee when they were asked to rejoin the cast for the show's fourth season. Unique returned as a Glee recurring cast member in the fourth season premiere, "The New Rachel". Newell, along with the rest of the cast, received a nomination for a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series in 2012, but lost to Modern Family. For the fifth season, Newell was promoted to main cast because of the character's popularity. In the sixth and final season, Newell was not a part of the regular cast, but did appear as a recurring guest star. A highlight of the sixth season was Newell singing "I Know Where I've Been" from Hairspray with the Transpersons Choir of 200 performers.
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