Before he became one of the most popular stars of Glee, actor Chris Colfer says he was told to hide his identity as a gay man — or else he’d never work in Hollywood again.
In an appearance on The View this week, Colfer explained that even though fan-favorite gay teen Kurt Hummel was written specifically for him, publicly embracing his own queerness was akin to a career death sentence — at least, that’s what people around him claimed at the time.
“I grew up in a very conservative town where being openly gay was dangerous,” Colfer said. “[W]hen I read the script for the first time was when I saw that it was an openly gay character and I was terrified [...] When I started filming the show I had a lot of people tell me, ‘Do not come out whatever you do because it will ruin your career.’ So I hid for a little bit.”
Despite his best efforts to remain closeted, Colfer said, there were some things he simply couldn’t repress. “I also told them, ‘I can’t hide it with my voice; I’m more effeminate than most people. I can’t hide it.’ And they said, ‘Don’t worry. As long as you never address it, you’ll be rewarded for it in the end.’”
But that façade was simply not meant to continue, especially after Colfer realized the social and cultural impact his character was having in real time. “We went on this big poster signing tour right before the show came out,” Colfer continued, “and this little boy secretly slid me an envelope when his parents weren’t looking, and I opened it up and it was a little note that said, ‘Thank you.’ There was a little paper clip chain that was the colors of the rainbow.
“In that moment I knew, I have to come out,” Colfer added. “I was thinking, ‘OK, yeah, if I’m an openly gay actor, yeah, I may never win a major award. I may never get to play a superhero [...] But I think being a beacon of positivity and providing that comfort for people is way more important than attention.”
Colfer also reunited with The View cohost and EGOT luminary Whoopi Goldberg, who appeared in several episodes of Glee as vocal instructor Carmen Tibideaux. (During a show last month, longtime LGBTQ+ ally Goldberg criticized mainstream media portrayals of campus protests against the Israeli occupation of Palestine, to producers’ apparent consternation.) “Whoopi is just so funny [...] whenever there was downtime between scenes, everyone, cast and crew, would pull their chairs around Whoopi and laugh their asses off at the things she said,” Colfer recalled. “You’ve been my hero since I was a small kid.”
Of course, Colfer wasn’t on The View to promote Glee; even Ryan Murphy has seemingly moved on to, uh, other passions. Instead, Colfer came on the show to boost his new novel Roswell Johnson Saves the World — a science-fiction adventure for young readers, which marks Colfer’s twentieth (!) published book. Colfer’s The Land of Stories and A Tale of Magic series have been targeted for several years by conservative groups as part of a campaign to remove LGBTQ+ books from libraries and schools across the U.S. He received a Free Speech Defender Award from the National Coalition Against Censorship in 2021, accepting the award from, appropriately, Whoopi Goldberg.
“It’s never fun when people show up with guns to school board meetings and demand that your books be taken off the shelves,” Colfer said on The View this week, referencing the recent escalation in violence at such meetings in the U.S. “It’s a really, really unfortunate time that we’re living in, when books like mine that are completely innocent are being targeted simply because of who wrote them.”
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