Chris Colfer, who plays gay teenager Kurt Hummel on Glee, is featured in the special television issue of Rolling Stone in a section called “The best characters in TV.”He recalls in an interview kids shouting “Fag!” or “Freak!” in the hallway at school.
“When you’re in that situation, you learn to think on your feet. I’d always respond, ‘Delinquent!’ or some other word they couldn’t understand.”
The article tells us that Chris grew up in Clovis, California (near Fresno) which he describes as “conservative, hot and flat.” His parents were die-hard Republicans who sent him to Jesus camp and took him to the local rodeo dressed “in these horrible, horrible little cowboy outfits. I still can’t listen to country music without recalling my trauma.”
He hit the bad luck trifecta in school: fat, braces, gay: “I was the bottom of the food chain. Very, very frumpy.”
Of Kurt he said: “I would just like to see him be happy and to keep inspiring the kids that watch him. … I see these gay characters on other programs, and they’re always loud and flamboyant. In high school – especially in a conservative town – someone wouldn’t be like that. That’s why I made Kurt more internal and superior, rather than external and annoying.”
Chris, who graduated from high school himself just over two years ago, enrolled in Fresno City College and would drive down to Los Angeles for auditions. He quickly landed Glee and worried what the folks back in Clovis would think of him playing a gay teen – he was not yet publicly out himself: “I’m glad I had that fear because it made the character that much more real.”
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