Glee newcomer Darren Criss says
he was “inadvertently raised in the gay community.”
Criss' character Blaine, an out and
proud student from a rival glee club named the Dalton Academy
Warblers, premiered Tuesday on the Fox musical-comedy.
His inaugural performance of Katy
Perry's Teenage Dream has earned him high praise from fans.
(The video is embedded in the right panel of this page.)
The initial buzz on Blaine was that he
was set to woo gay McKinley High student Kurt Hummel, played by Chris
Colfer. But Tuesday's episode, suggestively titled Never Been
Kissed, presented Blaine as more of a mentor than a love interest
for Kurt.
In
an interview with Vanity Fair published Tuesday, the
23-year-old Criss described his character as “very Tom Ford-ish.”
“Blaine is a very, very, very cool
cool guy,” he said. “He's experienced many of the same trials
and tribulations that Kurt has. When we meet him, Blaine sees a lot
of himself in Kurt, in terms of experiences and the way they feel
about the world around them.”
The San Francisco native added that he
feels as if he was raised by the gay community.
“I was
inadvertently raised by the 'gay community,'” the openly straight
actor said. “I had straight parents, but I spent massive amounts
of time at a very early age with gay, theater-hopeful
thirty-somethings.”