At just 19, Christopher Paul Colfer of Clovis, Calif., a small town
near Fresno, rose to TV stardom playing Glee's Kurt Hummel, at the time, one of the rare, realistic
gay characters in prime time… & he can really sing. With no professional
training, Colfer so impressed Glee creator Ryan Murphy during initial auditions
that the character was written specifically for him.
A graduate of Clovis East High School, Colfer was a 3
time speech & debate champion, president of the writer’s club, & wrote
& directed a musical spoof of Sweeney Todd called “Shirley Todd.” His
closest friends in school were the lunch room ladies because he preferred to
stay home to write than to go out with friends. He also took care of his
sister, Hannah, who suffers from epilepsy that has kept her in and out of
hospitals all of her life.
Colfer: “I was made fun of a lot in high school because
of the way I sound & the way I was. I was a lone duck in a swan filled pond
who criticized everyone. So I think everyone might be going, ‘Oh, he’s playing
the gay character. Figures.’ Just because that’s how they perceived me.” Between the ages of 9 &14, Colfer performed in local
plays 4 nights a week. He landed a Hollywood agent & began traveling the 8
hours round trip to LA for auditions with his mother. He tried out for about 30
roles before he was cast on Glee.
I have remained fan of Glee through the end of the just
concluded 3rd season, & I am encouraged by the range of gay characters
portrayed on the show. On TV, at last, gays are not drawn in non-stereotypical
fashion as strictly victims, tragedies, predators or sissies. We now have characters that
embrace who they are & are in loving, fulfilling relationships In this way,
Kurt Hummel is bound to become a role model for teens in the midst of
discovering who they are & also for adults who have been in Kurt’s shoes.
On Glee this
spring, a transgender character named Unique is competing in a sing-off. On
Grey’s Anatomy, a show I have never viewed, a lesbian couple is adjusting to
married life, having been pronounced “wife & wife” last season.
The cultural battlefield of TV has changed since the
1980s with the very neutered portrayal of Tony Randall’s Sidney Schorr on NBC’s
Love, Sidney or in the 1990s, when the Religious Right objected to Ellen coming
out & Will & Grace coming on.
Today, there is very little complaining about shows like
Modern Family, the #1 sitcom or Post Apocalyptic Bohemia favorite- Smash, which
has 5 openly gay characters, or the refreshing sitcom-Happy Endings, which,
against stereotype, has a husky & lazy gay male character, possibly based
on me. Mitt Romney is known to be a fan of Modern Family.
Next season NBC has a new show from Glee creator- Ryan
Murphy that features a gay couple trying to have a child & their surrogate,
titled The New Normal.
Vice President Biden stated that Will & Grace:
“probably did more to educate the American public than almost anything
anybody’s ever done so far.” When that sitcom began on NBC, conservatives
claimed that would make homosexuality seem desirable. They were correct.
On Ellen, Ellen DeGeneres, came out on the show & in
real life in 1997. DeGeneres threatened to quit a year later when ABC preceded
an episode that showed her jokingly kissing a friend with a message that
warned: “Due to adult content, parental discretion is advised.” Can you imagine
such a notice on Modern Family or Glee?
Smash aired a funny & sweet scene
of a pair of men in bed, one a Republican, after an evening of bad sex. Now,
that is realism.
Steven Levitan, a co-creator of Modern Family: “We
thought that when the show started, the inclusion of Cameron & Mitchell
would limit our success a bit, because it will perhaps alienate a certain
segment of the population.In fact, it’s turned out to be quite the opposite.”
Media watchdogs like the Parents Television Council, one
of the most active conservative media groups, do occasionally speak out against
TV programming, & the religious fanatics have not been silent & Glee
has been scrutinized. The Media Research Center stated: “Glee merely pretends
to be a show for young people while actually serving as an assault on our
traditional values.”
Colfer: “I don’t personally feel a responsibility to be a
role model, but as the actor, I do.” On one of the most the powerful moments to ever air on
TV, Glee’s Kurt Hummel came out to his father, played by the always excellent-
Mike O’Malley, in a scene that the
show’s creator. Ryan Murphy took verbatim from his life.
Last year Colfer was named to Time Magazine's list of The
100 Most Influential Americans.
This summer, Colfer will star in Struck by Lightning, for
which he wrote the screenplay. The plot revolves around a character, who is
struck & killed by a bolt of lightning, & looks back on his exploits as he
blackmails his fellow senior classmates into contributing to a literary
magazine he is publishing.
Colfer turns 22 years old today. Times have really
changed, at 22 years old, I would never have dared to be an out & proud
actor. Colfer & his creation of the character of Kurt on Glee make him a
hero to me.
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