-Chris, it's always great to have you on the show.
-Thanks for having me. -One of my favorite guests.
You got to see Lin-Manuel backstage?
-I haven't yet. -Oh, really?
-But I'm planning on pitching him a few musicals.
[ Light laughter ] -Oh, he --
-Yes. -He'd probably love that.
-I'm sure it never happens. -Yeah.
Can you give me one? -Yes. Okay.
Okay, the first one is called
"Hoarders: A Musical About Letting Go."
[ Laughter ]
-All right, I like that. I'm in, I'm in.
-And the songs are, number one, "Objects Don't Have Souls."
[ Light laughter ]
Number two, "Whose Cat is This?"
[ Laughter ]
And number three, "Where's My Husband?"
[ Laughter, cheers, applause ]
-Yeah, and I hope at the end of the second act, they find him.
-Yeah, they find him! Yeah, absolutely.
It's great. -Every time I have you on,
I kind of coerce a story out of you
about a supernatural experience.
-Oh, yes. -We talked about aliens.
-Uh-huh, yes. Covered that, yes.
-Yeah, we've covered that. We've talked about...
-Pet psychics. -Pet psychic was the last time.
-Yeah. -It was very --
Do you have any more supernatural experiences
that have gone wrong for you that we could discuss?
-I wish the answer was no. Yeah.
[ Laughter ]
But, yeah, these things keep happening to me.
I don't know why.
But, yes. I recently got into a fight
with my mother, and she passed away three years ago.
-Oh. -Yeah, it gets better.
It gets better. [ Light laughter ]
So, anyway, one of my best friends, her name is Shar.
She is a psychic. -Okay.
-And so, whenever we get lunch together,
we'll be gossiping or talking about politics,
and suddenly, she'll kind of go into a trance,
and one of my dead relatives will come through
and give me a message.
And this one time, she kind of did her thing
and said, "Oh, your mother has a message for you."
And I was like, "Oh, what is it?"
And she said, "When you're directing
the 'Land of Stories' movie, which, knock on wood,
happens soon when the Disney/Fox merger settles down.
-Yes. -"When you're directing
the 'Land of Stories' movie, and the monitors go on and off,
on and off, that's your mom saying hello."
And I said, "Can she pick a different sign?
'Cause I'm gonna need those to work."
[ Laughter ] Anyways, so we proceeded --
We then got into a big argument, my Mom and I.
She, like, worked really hard on that sign,
and she's really upset.
You know, so, like, it's never enough for me.
[ Laughter ]
And then the waiter came over, and he was like,
"Oh, is everything okay?"
And I was like, "Oh, I'm just arguing with my mom."
And he was like, "Oh, I didn't realize this is your mom."
I was like, "Oh, no, she's dead."
[ Laughter ]
Anyways, so we haven't been back to that restaurant in a while.
-Yeah, no, you can't go back to that.
All right, good.
This, "The Tale of Magic," this is, I want to say --
Is it your 15th book? -15th, yeah.
-That's unbelievable, dude. I think it's amazing.
[ Cheers and applause ] -Thank you.
-Amazing job. -Thank you.
-They're great books. On the bestseller list.
You're making it into a movie.
Are you now more recognized as Chris Colfer the author
or Chris Colfer the actor?
-It really just depends on where I'm at.
Like, if I'm near a high school, it's definitely,
I'm the guy from "Glee,"
but if it's an elementary school,
then I'm definitely the author of "The Land of Stories."
But I'm actually -- I'm having a hard time --
I wish I could brag about it a little bit,
because people, especially in Los Angeles,
the city that never reads... [ Laughter ]
[ Cheers and applause ]
Oh, no.
I'm gonna hear about that one. -Yeah.
-They always kind of assume that if you've been on TV before,
and you're not any more, that you're either dead
or you're going through a really hard time.
And I remember this one time, I was at a party,
and this lady, she was famous.
I'm not gonna say who it was.
But she came up to me, and she's like,
"Oh! What are you up to now?"
And I was like, "Oh, I'm an author."
And she goes, "Oh. Well, that's okay."
[ Laughter ]
And I was like, "No, no, they're really popular."
And she's like, "I bet they are."
[ Laughter ]
And I was like, "No, they're an international
best-selling series."
And she's like, "That's right, honey, chins up."
[ Laughter ]
So, yeah.
-And really, you're like, "No, actually I'm happy."
-I'm happy. -These are doing really well.
They're making them into movies. -"I'm doing good!
I'm doing good!" [ Laughter ]
-15 books. [ Cheers and applause ]
-Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
[ Laughs ]
-This one here, you said, is the toughest to write.
-It was, it was. -"A Tale of Magic."
Why is this one tough?
-This book, it was so different from anything else
I've ever written, because literally everything
is an allegory about something I've experienced
or something that really frustrates me.
And two of the main themes are prejudice and depression.
And there's just something about breaking those two things down
into a language that a child would understand
that you just -- you see how pointless it is.
And it would just infuriate me so much,
I'd have to get up from my desk a few times and walk away.
-And you just came from a book signing.
I know they packed the place.
Do your fans ever ask for some weird things, like,
"Hey, can you take a weird photo?"
or sign something odd or...
-Well, nothing has ever --
As of now, nothing has ever beaten
this one time when a woman plopped her baby down
on the table and asked me to sign it.
[ Laughter ]
-Sign the baby? -Sign the baby.
Yeah, yeah. And this baby gave me this look
like... [ Laughter ]
Like, he looked back at his mom, and looked at me and was like,
"I've got a long road ahead of me, don't I?"
[ Laughter ]
-Yeah. [ Applause ]
You don't sign your babies. -Don't sign babies.
-No, I want to read, if you don't mind,
the dedication that you put in this book.
'Cause I really loved it.
It said, "To all the brave people
who dared to be themselves
during a time that didn't accept them.
Thanks to you, I get to be me." -Yeah.
I thought that was really cool. -Thank you.
Yeah, thank you. [ Cheers and applause ]
-Why did you choose that dedication for this book?
-You know, I'm so fortunate,
because I live in this country in this century,
where if I had been born somewhere else,
even now, if I'd been born somewhere else,
I could be tossed off a roof
or stoned to death simply for existing.
But because I live here and I live now,
I get to be an award-winning actor,
I get to be an international best-selling author,
and I have a lot of those privileges
because of thousands and thousands
of very, very brave men and women who came before me
and sacrificed a lot.
Not for them but so someone like me could do that one day.
So, yeah, this book is for them. -That's really cool.
[ Cheers and applause ] Chris Colfer, everybody.