Chris Colfer says the fan culture surrounding Glee once became so intense that simply being photographed with him could turn someone into a character in fan fiction. The Golden Globe-winning actor, who played Kurt Hummel on the musical series, said there was a period early in his career when almost anyone seen beside him could end up being written into a story with him.
Speaking in an interview published Tuesday, 6 October, Colfer said the experience became especially strange when fan fiction shifted from fictional characters to his real life. He recalled friends sending him links to stories about himself and said some of the material was sexual, while some fans also pushed for a real-life romance between him and Glee co-star Darren Criss.
When Photos Became Fan Fiction
Colfer said he never searched for stories about himself, but friends occasionally sent him links to what he called 'pretty saucy stuff'. At the height of his early Glee fame, he said even being seen with someone could be enough to inspire a new pairing. 'There was a period in my early career when I couldn't be photographed with someone without them becoming the subject of some kind of fan fiction with me,' he said.
He compared the experience to being 'patient zero, walking around infecting everybody', joking that some friends may have secret online aliases used to write about him. Colfer said the content could be 'really jarring and sometimes really sexual' because the stories used him as a real person, not only the character he played. He did find one upside, saying he was usually written as the hero rather than the villain.
'Klaine' Fans Wanted Colfer and Darren Criss Together
Much of that attention grew around Kurt's relationship with Blaine Anderson, played by Darren Criss. The romance became one of Glee's defining relationships after Blaine was introduced during the second season, with the pairing known by the fandom name 'Klaine'. For some fans, Colfer said, the interest did not stop with the fictional couple.
'A lot of fans thought Glee was a documentary, and they really, really wanted Darren and me to be in a relationship in real life,' Colfer said. He added that some people would 'cross a line' by bringing details from his personal life into their theories or inventing material to support the relationship they wanted to believe existed. Colfer said that level of speculation made him 'a little uncomfortable'.
Colfer was not criticising fan fiction as a whole and said audiences writing new stories about fictional characters can be a major compliment for an actor or writer. He explained that his discomfort came when the subject stopped being Kurt Hummel and became Chris Colfer himself. Colfer said he appreciated fan fiction about fictional characters but found it strange when writers used him as a real person in their stories.
Colfer Went From Writing Fan Fiction to Inspiring It
There is also an irony in Colfer becoming a fan-fiction subject because he was writing his own versions of existing stories long before Glee. He said that at 12 he wrote scripts and adaptations, including his own version of Wicked, without thinking of the work as fan fiction. Years later, that interest fed into his 2017 young adult novel Stranger Than Fanfiction, about fans whose relationship with a television star becomes unexpectedly personal.
Colfer has continued to speak warmly about the Glee audience and cast despite the boundaries he said some fans crossed. He credited the show's longevity to viewers seeing themselves represented in its characters and said he still talks to someone from the cast 'almost every single day'. More than a decade after Glee ended, the stories fans built around Kurt, Blaine and the actors who played them are still following Colfer into the present.
