Glee’s Chris Colfer Reacts to Kurt Becoming Viral TikTok Trend: ‘What Is Happening?!’

Andy Swift
·2 min read
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Everything’s coming up roses for Glee‘s Kurt Hummel, and no one is more surprised than the actor who portrayed him.

A brief audio clip from Chris Colfer’s performance of “Rose’s Turn,” as featured in a 2010 episode of Fox’s Glee, has been dominating TikTok recently — so much that the song just debuted at No. 3 on the TikTok Billboard Top 50 chart. That’s right, one spot above Beyoncé’s “Texas Hold ‘Em.”

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“What is happening??????” an incredulous Colfer posted to X (formerly Twitter) on Friday, reacting to his 14-year-old recording suddenly returning to relevance. See his full post below:

The audio snippet includes just a few lyrics (“All that work, and what did it get me?”), which content creators are using to reflect on hard work they now consider futile for various reasons.

Here’s an example from actor Josh Peck, who famously dropped 100 pounds through diet and exercise, long before Ozempic became Hollywood’s “miracle” weight-loss solution:

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A post shared by Josh Peck (@shuapeck)

“Rose’s Turn” was originally written by Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim for the 1959 musical Gypsy. It has famously been performed on stage by theater legends like Ethel Merman, Patti LuPone and Bernadette Peters.

In the context of Glee, “Rose’s Turn” was performed by Colfer’s character in the Season 1 episode “Laryngitis,” in which Kurt triumphantly rejects his father’s perceived expectations and fully accepts his own self-love. And as RuPaul always says, if you can’t love yourself, how in the hell are you going to love somebody else?

Watch Colfer’s original performance of “Rose’s Turn” below:

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