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‘Paul Simon Probably Thought I Was a Seat Filler’: How a kismet chain of events got Chris Colfer in SNL’s ‘What Up With That?’ middle chair

How a kismet chain of events got Chris Colfer in SNL’s ‘What Up With That?’ middle chair.

Chris Colfer learned this in spectacularly amusing fashion while appearing on the seventh edition of Saturday Night Live ’s recurring “What Up With That?” sketch, which found the Glee actor sandwiched between a real Paul Simon and fake Lindsey Buckingham. Teased as part of “a salute to music greats” on the show’s May 14, 2011, episode, Colfer had the honor of fulfilling the essential duties of the middle chair: silently tolerating the absurdity of how Diondre (Kenan Thompson) runs his made-for-BET program, as the host would rather disrupt his guests with elaborate song-and-dance routines than actually let them talk. While the first guest tends to get a sentence or two in — Simon briefly hypes up his new album — the second is often relegated to reaction shots while a Narnia wardrobe full of characters such as, say, “the bad boy of bluegrass” Captain Sexy Banjo and the real Buckingham materialize out of nowhere.

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