- 1 day ago
Stephen Colbert goes online to answer the internet’s questions. The American comedian responds to questions on Quora, as well as fact-checking Wikipedia and replying to YouTube, TikTok and Instagram comments.Credits:Director: Kristen DeVoreDirector of Photography: AJ YoungEditor: Phil CeconiTalent: Stephen ColbertProducer: Sam DennisSenior Producer: Michael BeckertLine Producer: Jen SantosProduction Manager: James PipitoneProduction Coordinator: Elizabeth HymesTalent Booker: Dana MathewsCamera Operator: Shay Eberle-GunstGaffer: Lucas VilicichSound Mixer: Glo Hernandez; Mike RobertsonProduction Assistant: Hollie Ortiz; Fernando BarajasHair & Make-Up: Hee Soo KwonPost Production Supervisor: Jess DunnSupervising Editor: Rob LombardiAdditional Editor: Sam DiVitoAssistant Editor: Andy MorellSpecial Thanks: Chateau Marmont
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Hello GQ, it's Stephen Colbert.
00:03I'm going undercover on the internet.
00:06I feel like a spy.
00:08It's actually me.
00:11It's me, no cap.
00:15Instagram?
00:18If they truly want to honor their Chicago connections,
00:21eat tavern style.
00:22If you haven't been fed pizza by hand
00:23by Jeremy Allen White, sign up.
00:26I think he's doing this on tour
00:27around the United States right now.
00:28Tavern style, yeah, sure, fine.
00:30But deep dish.
00:32Chicago deep dish pizza.
00:33I know it gets a lot of grief.
00:34I know Jon Stewart has talked a lot of smack about it.
00:38And that's fine.
00:40If you can't handle deep dish, that's cool.
00:44I love a Chicago slice.
00:45I love a Neapolitan slice.
00:47But in Chicago, we eat our pizza like it's a baby pool,
00:51just filled with sauce and cheese.
00:53Put on a snorkel, grow up.
00:55Who has Colbert always wanted to interview but hasn't?
00:58The Pope.
00:59I really wanted to interview Francis.
01:01Really wanted to interview Francis.
01:03It seems like a very interesting cat, daddy-o.
01:05Leo, come on.
01:07Chicago, Chicago.
01:08Let's hit some deep dish.
01:09We'll go to a Sox game.
01:11I mean, I got nine months left.
01:12If there's one person I could talk to.
01:14I'd even go to Rome.
01:16You know what, I would do that for him.
01:18I would even go to Rome.
01:19Here it's a nice place.
01:21Hi!
01:22Is there anything you're reading that is helping you through this big transition?
01:27Also, I love you to the end of time.
01:29That's very nice.
01:30I'm always reading The Lord of the Rings.
01:31I mean, in little bits, because I'm always finding something new.
01:34I'm reading something I should have read years ago.
01:36Please, do not.
01:37No letters, please.
01:39I know it's a gap in my fantasy knowledge.
01:41I'm reading A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Lequeen.
01:44My fantasy friends are like, I'm so happy for you that you get to read this for the
01:48first time.
01:49Posted!
01:50Tick tock!
01:51I'm not going to have to dance, am I?
01:54How will the US save itself?
01:56Do you guys know the Dead Man Swim?
01:58We're politically drowning and the key is to get a lungful of air, float on your belly for
02:03as long as you can hold it, then float on your back for as long as you're comfortable,
02:07and then tread, and then you go belly, back, and tread until rescue arrives.
02:14Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart for President and Vice President.
02:18You can't afford me.
02:20Did Colbert get offers at other broadcasting networks?
02:23Maybe.
02:24I don't know.
02:25I'll have to check.
02:26I don't think so.
02:28Hey, your boat's on fire.
02:29You want to get on ours?
02:31Now on to Quora.
02:33Is Stephen Colbert a super genius?
02:35Haha.
02:36No.
02:37No.
02:38I think the only super genius is Marvin the Martian from Warner Brothers.
02:42I have a good memory, and people mistake that for intelligence.
02:46Who is smarter, Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert?
02:48I have a better memory than Jon Stewart.
02:50I have quick recall.
02:51If I read it and I like it, I probably know it, or if I heard it, I can remember things.
02:55And people mistake that for intelligence.
02:57Because then you can make associations between things that you remember to go, wow, he really
03:00synthesized that quickly.
03:02That's not the same thing as thinking.
03:03Jon Stewart's a much clearer thinker than I am.
03:06That's why he can reframe arguments on TV in very quick and very interesting ways.
03:11Because he's doing an analysis of what's actually happening here.
03:14Alright, let's see some YouTube comments.
03:17Those are always good for the bloodstream.
03:20Give me the too-long-didn't-read of how he met his wife.
03:23I met my wife the first night I was home in South Carolina after my girlfriend at the
03:29time gave me the ultimatum.
03:30We were going to Fisher Cut Bait, which didn't make a lot of sense to me because I didn't
03:34think she liked me that much.
03:35I went to the theater with my mom to the world premiere of Philip Glass and Allen Ginsberg's
03:39The Hydrogen Jukebox.
03:40My mom said, you seem really distracted.
03:42What do you think?
03:43What's going on?
03:44And I said, oh.
03:45I told her what was going on.
03:46And she goes, well, do you want to marry her?
03:47And I said, I don't know.
03:48And she goes, I don't know.
03:49And the scales fell from my eyes.
03:52No, I've been looking through all this worry and all this pressure when it should be clear
03:56to me.
03:57And then I had the clear answer that I guess I'm not marrying her, at least not now.
04:01And we walked into the lobby of the Satili Theater on King Street in Charleston and leaning
04:07against the wall under a sconce in a black linen dress, clearly having been to the beach
04:12because she was a little sun-kissed.
04:13And the voice answered in my head, that's your wife.
04:16You're going to marry her.
04:17I said, that's crazy.
04:18Get the fuck out of here.
04:20What are you doing?
04:21But I couldn't take my eyes off of her.
04:23And you know what I noticed?
04:24She was looking at me too.
04:26And I couldn't go talk to her because I had a girlfriend.
04:28And at the after party for the artists, she came over and she spoke to me and we took
04:32two steps in line.
04:33We talked for two hours.
04:34And now we have three kids and she's the best possible company.
04:40Replied.
04:41I would like to hear what Colbert wants his legacy to be.
04:45My kids.
04:46If they're okay.
04:47If they're happy.
04:48If they find fulfillment in their lives.
04:50And hopefully if they find somebody to share their life with.
04:54And to have somewhere dry to stand at the end of a stormy day.
05:00Which unmovie-fied Tolkien story would Colbert want to be made?
05:07And why is it Baron and Luthien?
05:08Well, listen, y'all.
05:09I mean, the reason why I wouldn't say Baron and Luthien is I don't think the estate is
05:13ever going to let the Silmarillion get adapted.
05:15But of Baron and Luthien, of course, is, and I don't think I'm getting out over my skis here.
05:22I think it's the story for Tolkien.
05:24But of Baron and Luthien is about a man named Baron who falls in love with an elf named Luthien.
05:30And he comes across her dancing in a glade in the forest.
05:34And he falls in love with her.
05:37It's almost as if he saw her across the lobby of a theater.
05:40And thought, that's my wife.
05:42And I'll make it quick.
05:43But Thingol's the father.
05:45Baron and Luthien fall in love.
05:46Luthien says, hey, I want to marry this guy.
05:48Ain't he cute?
05:49You get one of those three gems out of his iron crown from Aang Ben.
05:54Luthien really does a lot of it because she's stronger than he is.
05:57And she, with her dog, Huan.
05:59Singing is very important in Tolkien's cosmology.
06:01She stands outside of Sauron's castle.
06:03Gets a little greedy, tries to cut the second gem.
06:06Hook her by crook, they make it back to Thingol.
06:08And Thingol's like, I thought I told you.
06:10And they go catch the wolf and they cut her open.
06:11The gem's there and Thingol goes, okay.
06:14And that's just scratching the surface of that story.
06:21Wikipedia.
06:23As a child, he observed that Southerners were often depicted as being less intelligent than other characters on scripted television.
06:30To avoid that stereotype, he taught himself to imitate the speech of American news anchors.
06:35My mom pointed out to me when I was a kid.
06:38My mom wasn't from South Carolina.
06:40She had, you know, been to acting school and she didn't sound like she was from New York.
06:45She sounded like she was pretty much from nowhere.
06:47She pointed out to me that newscasters had a very neutral affect to their voice.
06:54Which means they really sound like they're from Connecticut.
06:56And I saw that people on TV were perceived as dumb if they were from the South.
07:02Something I don't agree with.
07:03I decided to pick John Chancellor as who I would sound like.
07:08Because he was the NBC Nightly News anchor when I was a boy.
07:11So I was like, I'll sound like John Chancellor.
07:12In the spy business, the dagger is replacing the cloak.
07:16And now, like this, if you get me drunk or if I'm angry, I'll fall into a Southern accent.
07:21When I really try to do a Southern accent, I sound like somebody in like a TV movie of John Jake's North and South.
07:28Well, I say to you, sir, how dare you impugn my reputation?
07:34Tatat!
07:35In January 2010, Colbert was named the assistant sports psychologist for the U.S. Olympic speed skating team of the 2010 Winter Olympics.
07:45This is correct.
07:46It's one of the most fun things that we ever did.
07:49We got a call from the U.S. speed skating team, just out of the blue.
07:54And they said, we are normally sponsored by a Dutch bank.
07:59But this Dutch bank had gone belly up in the banking crisis of 2009.
08:05And they no longer had a sponsor.
08:07So how much money are we talking here?
08:08It's like $300,000 is what we need to do the whole season, the trials, everything leading up to the Olympics.
08:15Oh, we can raise that.
08:17But here's the deal.
08:18If I reach out to the Colbert nation, which is what we call the audience, they're going to love this idea.
08:23But it needs to be the Stephen Colbert, the U.S. Olympic speed skating team.
08:28His name has to be on everything, which is one of the fun reasons to play the character,
08:32is that I got to piggyback my ego on his ego and pretend like it wasn't mine.
08:36They talked about it and they said, okay, we can't actually name it, but we can put your face on everything.
08:43I had been made a doctor by several universities.
08:47I had been made a reverend by, I think, sending in 50 bucks to the Church Universal and Triumphant.
08:53I had been made a knight by Queen Noor.
08:55I was a knight of Jordan.
08:56And so I was the reverend Sir Doctor.
08:59And we wanted to add other things to that.
09:02At one point, I was the first lady of France because Hollande's wife didn't show up to a state dinner and I took her seat at the dinner.
09:08So I was like, well, I was le premier dôme de la France or something like that.
09:12So I said, I have to be an Olympic.
09:14I have to be an Olympian.
09:16They managed to make me assistant sports psychologist for the US speed skating team.
09:21And that's when we took the show to Vancouver.
09:24One of the hardest and one of the greatest things we ever did and the greatest compliment I ever got.
09:29I went on a letterman to try to let everybody know that we were doing this.
09:32And at that point, we had raised enough money that it was official.
09:35Like their hoods that come over.
09:36It was C right here.
09:37It was the Colbert C.
09:39They had my face on their thigh.
09:41It said Colbert Nation.
09:43Their official team portrait was in front of this huge banner that said Colbert Report or Colbert Nation.
09:48Dave held up that picture.
09:49And in the commercial break, he looked at it for a long time, just nodding and nodding.
09:54What was he thinking?
09:55What was he thinking?
09:56Because he's Dave.
09:57I want to know everything he's thinking.
09:58And he looked at this and he looked at me and he goes, this is a great idea.
10:03And I thought I could quit now.
10:06In 2009, NASA engineered a new treadmill for the International Space Station.
10:10NASA renamed it the Combined Operational Load-Bearing External Resistance Treadmill or Colbert.
10:15It was a contest for the International Space Station module that had yet to be named.
10:20Any contest, we're like, we want to win that contest.
10:23Whatever, name something, anything.
10:24People were aware of this and stopped doing open contests.
10:28Like you can just submit any name you want.
10:29NASA had not heard this.
10:31And NASA said anyone can submit a name.
10:33And so we beat everybody by far.
10:36And NASA called and said, we cannot name the module after Stephen Colbert.
10:41Well, then why did you make those the rules?
10:43Didn't we win?
10:44And they said, yes.
10:45Is there anything else that we could do?
10:47And I said, look, I don't want to really be a pain in the ass for you guys.
10:50We're just having fun here.
10:51What do you got?
10:52And they said, oh, we've got a water reclamation system.
10:55The astronaut pee is cycled and then they use that as drinking water.
11:00I said, because that's so great because what I want to do is have you bring some of that water back down to me
11:05so I can have the most patriotic cocktail of all time, a bourbon and astronaut pee.
11:11And they said, okay, we're not going to name it after you then.
11:14Fuck.
11:15Why didn't I keep my mouth shut?
11:17What if we did this?
11:18And the combined operational load bearings external resistance treadmill was named.
11:22And I went down there and I tested it out.
11:25And I learned how to be an astronaut at headquarters down in Houston.
11:28And it's still up there and they still exercise on it.
11:31It's one of the things I'm most excited about having done.
11:35Okay.
11:36That's me.
11:37Stephen Colbert signing off from the internet.
11:40It's been a pleasure.
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