Chris Colfer credits an author's lesson about using humor as protection to help him survive fame and personal loss. He discusses losing people to addiction, how a friend in recovery reframed it as a disease, and his drive to give young readers better tools for handling grief.
Page 84
December 26, 2025
It's so funny, because she was 19 when Star wars started. I was 18 when Glee started. I almost felt like she wrote the book for me because she taught me how to laugh at it all and how to not take it so seriously and to just take the piss out of all the tough stuff. The book changed my life, but there's actually one sentence in particular that I would be happy to read that really changed me forever. I can pull that up if you'd like.
Yeah.
Okay, so this is on page 84, but she's talking about George Lucas. But she says the man has transported audiences the world over and has provided Mark and Harrison and myself with enough fan mail and even a small, merry band of stalkers keeping us entertained for the rest of our unnatural lives, not to mention identities that will follow us to our respective graves like a vague, exotic smell. And I remember when I read that line, I laughed for probably an hour straight because no one had summarized what I was experiencing so well. And with such humor before, she really taught me. I mean, I was so young when I wrote it, but she was really one of the first authors to teach me how humor can be used as a weapon and protection and just how important humor is to. To use in really tough situations.
Is that something that you're good at?
I like to think so, yeah. I like to think that I can humor my way out of any dark event. One of my biggest pet peeves in literature and in films is when there is no levity, because I think levity is one of the most human experiences ever. So I get quite upset when I'm watching a drama and there's, you know, no one cracking a joke in. In a. In a tough situation.
Yeah. You know what's funny is in high school, I was voted funniest.
Oh, yeah? Yeah.
Like the class clown, kind of. And when that was told to me that I was voted that I. I was like, I'm not funny. Like, that's not. That's my mask. Like, I'm trying to survive here. It was so odd to me because I didn't see myself as a comedian.
Yeah, yeah. You weren't doing it to be funny.
It was a protection mechanism, is what it was. Or a deflection. Yeah, maybe more deflection. But, yeah, it is interesting, like, because there is a sadness to this also because of addiction and just kind of, you know, carrying a weight.
Yeah, absolutely.
And feeling kind of like. I think a lot of times with addiction, the addiction wouldn't exist if the person felt like they were enough Right.
Exactly.
I mean, she even says it in here. She's trying to numb.
Yeah. Right.
Herself.
Yeah. I just. Actually, one of the reasons I wrote this book is because I've lost so many people to addiction. I did not handle those situations well because I blame myself. I didn't fully understand it as the disease that it actually was. And it wasn't until a few years ago that I had a conversation with one of my friends who's in recovery, who really told me what it was and told me that I was doing it all wrong. Like, it wasn't about me. It wasn't. These people that I lost hadn't chosen a substance over me. These people were in a really unfortunate mindset where they had lost all control and perspective. And once he put that into perspective for me, I was able to heal from the losses that I had had. I tried to put it into perspective for my young readers. So just in case that they ever go through something like that, hopefully they'll have better tools to handle it than I did. And I learned a lot of that from Carrie.
But you've never had an addiction like that?
No, no. I mean, I'm addicted to, like, social media and Diet Coke. But that's as far as I've gone.
Luckily, in understanding and having empathy for others who do have an addiction. What is it you think that made you different, that you never fell into that?
I think I thought people were in the same mind space that I was choosing this, choosing it, making a choice, making a conscious choice. And that conversation I mentioned is when my friend said, when you have an addiction, it's like you lose control over your body, and there is no choice. There is only the addiction. There's only the substance. I guess I just had never thought of it that way. And once he taught me that, it was like I was able to realize that it wasn't about me. The losses that I had. It was not about me. It wasn't that I wasn't doing enough. It wasn't that I wasn't good enough. It was just these people had a disease that had nothing to do with me. And I did everything I could, and they did everything they could, but they just had a little piece of themselves that was broken that they were desperate to fill. And the substance was doing that. It.
