Chris Colfer Recalls Scary Side of Fame From Being 'the Gay Kid on Glee' In Early 2000s
Chris Colfer is opening up about gaining instant fame after Glee came out.
The 35-year-old writer was thrust into global fame in 2009 when the Fox musical TV series debuted, but there was a downside of playing “the gay kid,” Kurt Hummel, on the show.
In a recent interview, Chris recalled playing an openly gay teen during a time when people didn’t like to see that on TV.
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“I loved pretending… I loved creating other people, creating characters. I loved storytelling. I never in a million years thought that fame would have any part of my career at all… It got really scary really fast,” he said on the Syndicate X Library YouTube series Books That Changed My Life. “And I was playing an openly gay teenager at a time when people did not like seeing openly gay teenagers on television… It was not welcome. And the death threats and the security risks started almost immediately. I became very agoraphobic.”
“It’s hard to explain now because the world has changed for the better so much that sometimes people don’t really believe me… but it was not okay to be gay back then, in the early 2000s,” Chris continued. “Late night talk show hosts would take cracks at me, and it was perfectly fine because I was the gay kid. Politicians would say things about me publicly, perfectly fine because I was the gay kid. Pastors of mega churches would call me the anti-Christ, and it was perfectly accepted, because I was the gay kid. There was no one defending me. There was no one coming to my rescue.”
“When I would talk about it with people, they’d say, ‘Well, what do you expect? You’re the gay kid on Glee. This is just what’s going to happen,’” he said.
Also during the episode, Chris talked about auditioning for Glee and finding out he got the role, how his life changed after it premiered, and much more. Check it out HERE!
In case you missed it, earlier this year it was announced that Chris‘ best-selling book “The Land of Stories” is being turned into a live-action movie.