"I was a nerd, I was fugly. My friends and I called ourselves the underdogs, " she recalls.
"We were a motley crew and I was too scared, too chicken shit, to go to that audition."
The Chinese-born television journalist is now starring in her own theatre production at Arts House in Melbourne called 1154 Days.
It's based on her gruelling experience in detention and named for the amount of time she spent there.
The theatre piece is more than just the story of her incarceration, Lei said.
"It's about facing life when everything has been stripped away, and making the show has itself been an exercise in emancipation.
"A part of doing justice to freedom is to throw myself at life in a much more daring way, compared to if I hadn't gone through this terrible experience."
In August 2020, the veteran reporter was in Beijing presenting China's government-run Global Business TV show when confronted by Ministry of State Security officers, blindfolded and hauled off to a secret location.
Cut off from family and the outside world, she was initially held under constant surveillance in China's system of black jails, known as Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location, or RSDL.
As her case made global headlines, Lei had to find ways to survive through imagination, memory, and connecting with other prisoners and even her captors.
She was released and returned to Australia in 2023 but the effects of her detention are still playing out.
She has had to navigate the effects of her long absence on her two children.
After a book released in 2025 alongside a Sky News documentary about her experiences, Cheng Lei could be forgiven for not wanting to revisit her time in detention.
But she hopes to tour the theatre production internationally to raise awareness about hostage diplomacy, the RDSL system and wider activities of China's Ministry of State Security.
"I'm still here and I can tell my version of the story, not the bullshit they spin on the Chinese internet about me," she said.
Lei would like to think Australians have some awareness of how China treats political prisoners but says even the co-directors of 1154 Days, Emma Valente and Clyde White, were surprised at the level of psychological control she was subjected to.
She also believes Australians probably don't realise how deeply the Chinese government has infiltrated the diaspora community.
"People don't know the full extent of what's happening because China pays so much to coerce people into doing their dirty work and buys the support of a lot of local community leaders," she said.
1154 Days runs May 28 - 31 at Arts House, North Melbourne Town Hall.
