It’s well-known that there’s nothing but love between Jonathan Groff and Lea Michele. The best friends are closer than close; she showed him her vagina, he read her TikTok comments. So when Groff was tapped to write about the Funny Girl star for a series on powerful New Yorkers, we expected (and got!) effusive praise. But we did not expect the mob connection.
Groff and Michele met working on Spring Awakening and have remained close since, including through his time on her show Glee. In the essay, for Variety, Groff praises his costar’s work ethic and talent, and notes that she began her Broadway career at just eight years old, when she was cast in Les Misérables. He calls her a true New Yorker who taught him Yiddish words, took him to the legendary Zabar’s, got him drunk at a pub, and, oh yeah, her grandfather was in the mob.
Yes, you read that right. In the middle of his piece, Groff casually reveals Michele’s connection to the only industry more scandalous than showbiz: crime. “This was 1995, and her grandfather, Porky, was still in prison for his ties to the Gambino crime family,” writes Groff, declining to elaborate on what those “ties” were. He adds, “Lea would visit him once a month on her days off from the theater.”
Brief but furious googling did not turn up much information about the Rachel Berry–Gambino connection, and it seems Michele has never addressed her grandpa’s, uh, line of work. There is a confirmed “consigliere” from New York called John “Porky” Zancocchio, but he worked for the Bonanno crime family, so don’t get it twisted. According to Wikipedia, Michele’s mother’s maiden name is Porcelli, which led us to Anthony “Porky” Porcelli, who appears on this blog about mafia guys and was arrested for running a heroin trafficking ring in 1991, according to this report from the Southern District of New York. There also appears to be an article about it from the Baltimore Sun, but their archive is broken and the links don’t work.
And that’s what you missed on Glee.
