As one of the most popular stars on social media and beyond, Chris Olsen is used to having millions of eyes on him. Now, the internet sensation is about to enter new territory: being the opening act for Meghan Trainor’s The Timeless Tour. When GLAAD’s Anthony Allen Ramos interviewed Olsen, he admitted that he was “super excited and super nervous”.
“What are you gonna expect for someone who hasn’t performed since college?” joked Olsen, who has a BFA in musical theater from the Berklee College of Music in Boston. The prestigious college also connects him to Trainor as they did a summer program together. “Meghan and I were meant to be together in so many ways.”
The Timeless Tour kicked off in Hollywood, Florida on September 1 and Olsen is set as the opener in a dozen cities starting September 4.
“I’m literally being given a stage to do whatever I want,” said Olsen, who was in the middle of rehearsals during the interview. “But at the same time I haven’t performed and when I have performed, it’s been in a show at college or at theater camp and those shows are scripted and they have music that’s written for you… so creating my own show was never something I even knew how to do. I’ve had conversations with a lot of different people who have toured before. I’ve had conversations with different creative directors… some people who really have good insight on how to create something from scratch. I think those conversations have really inspired me and informed me on what I wanna do.”
He also said it takes pressure off of him. “I’m up there to have fun and to hype everyone up for Meghan Trainor… I’m opening, but it doesn’t have to be all about me.”
Olsen has become a prominent internet personalty from the LGBTQ community. With The Timeless Tour, his reach will just expand even more. That said, he is aware of the rhetoric around being a content creator and inevitable negativity and hate that will come. “The hard part about Tik Tok is anyone has the chance to go viral and so a lot of people, who maybe didn’t even plan on it, end up going viral and then they end up experiencing pain like this for the first time.”
He went on to say that he has experienced homophobia and xenophobia, and says that it hurts the most when it comes from his own community. “I think a lot of the time queer people can try to tear other queer people down because we’re so used to being the ones that are torn down,” he said. “So we see people in our own community and a lot of the time I think people see that as an easy target or they project their own pain onto them.”
“I want queer people to win,” he continued. “I want as many queer people as possible to win. It’s so fun when I see a loud and proud queer person get a viral video or start blowing up. That’s exactly what we were looking for as kids. We wanted representation in every corner…. and I’m not saying by being queer, then you inherently have to like other queer people’s personality… but it’s a little easier to not be outwardly negative towards them if there’s not something specifically problematic.”