- 37 minutes ago
Stephen Colbert opens up like never before in this deeply personal conversation about the end of ‘The Late Show’ and what comes next after more than a decade behind the desk.
Category
✨
PeopleTranscript
00:00The show is like a flaming toboggan ride every day and, you know, the trick is to not hit any
00:04trees on your way down the mountain, you know, before 1230.
00:07There's so much to think about every day to do the show that I actually don't have that much time
00:11to think about the show ending.
00:12So we're just going to run as fast as we can right through the tape or right into the brick
00:16wall, whatever it feels like when we get there.
00:21The minute I found out I was lying down on my couch with, I think, a sock over my eyes
00:26because I was trying to rest when my manager came in and said,
00:29do you have, do you have 15 minutes to talk? I'm like, in person? We never talk in person. What
00:34is this about?
00:35And he said that this is, this is the last season. So I took the sock off and I sat
00:39up and I said, I'm sorry, I'm awake.
00:41Could you say that one more time? Next year will be our last season. The network will be ending the
00:46late show in May.
00:48It's getting much realer. Every moment's getting a little more precious. I tried never to take for granted, like being
00:53in the Ed Sullivan,
00:54having a Broadway theater, having that tremendous audience or have the ability to work with the funniest people I know
00:59every day.
01:00And make jokes about the things that make me most anxious every day.
01:05But at the same time, you can't really dwell on that ending because you don't have time for it.
01:09Any more you can think about walking and still walk or swallowing and not, you know, choke on your own
01:16tongue.
01:16You just have to do the show.
01:18We'll meet again. Don't know where. Don't know when.
01:25It's a funny thing with the Colbert Report, I knew how I wanted it to end because, well, I picked
01:30the date.
01:31Somehow about me picking the date and picking the year and everything.
01:34I'm like, OK, it's going to be December 18th, 2014.
01:37I remember I went to my assistant, Amy Cole, and I said, Amy, what's the last day of 2014 in
01:43production?
01:43And she said, oh, it's December 18th. I said, oh, good to know.
01:45And I went down and I sat at my desk and I thought for a second and I thought of
01:47the entire show.
01:48Oh, OK, that's what it will be. It kind of all came in one.
01:51And, you know, we rewrote and noodled and everything.
01:53But I had the idea this time, you know, wasn't my choice, wasn't my date.
01:57I think that's why I didn't come all at once.
01:59And one or two elements came to me like, what about this? What about that?
02:03And then we've had meetings over the last few months.
02:05And recently it all just it all just gelled.
02:08It's not written, but I know what I want to end up.
02:12And luckily, it looks like it's going to.
02:14You can't do this forever. You have to think about, well, when is the right time to end your tenure?
02:21I didn't think this soon.
02:23Who knows? Maybe CBS saved my life because it takes a lot of bone marrow to do the show every
02:30day.
02:30Now I'll be stepping down with enough time, enough energy to do other things that I want to do.
02:35The thing I found myself reading over and over again were the six chapters early on in the fellowship
02:39that y'all never developed into the first movie back in the day.
02:43And I thought, oh, wait, maybe that could be its own story that could fit into the larger story.
02:49This Lord of the Rings thing I was working on before the show was cancelled.
02:53This has been years I've been thinking about it.
02:55I've been working on it with my son since COVID, actually.
02:58And then working on it with Peter Jackson and Philip Loins and Fran Walsh for almost two years now.
03:05So that wasn't a post-show idea.
03:07That was an idea.
03:08And I'm glad they liked it.
03:10And now I'll have time to work on it.
03:12But that wasn't part of the what will I do next feeling.
03:16That was, I wonder if I could do any of this while I was still doing the show.
03:19We'll land this plane and we'll check out the view from there.
03:22But I don't think I could really have a big plan beyond this.
03:26I can finally speak unvarnished truth to power and say what I really think about Donald Trump.
03:33Starting right now.
03:35I don't have any fear of the administration doing anything to me.
03:40I mean, how silly would it be?
03:44How silly would it be?
03:45I mean, listen.
03:48My present situation aside, like the ending of the show aside, which people can speculate all they want.
03:53And I can't argue with their speculations, you know.
03:56But we're clowns.
04:00How much does it diminish the office of the presidency to even notice what we say?
04:07You know, that guy needs to know how to pick his battles.
04:11I mean, metaphorically and literally.
04:17I'm an actor.
04:19You know, I'm an actor and a writer.
04:21And I became a writer because nobody would cast me in anything.
04:23And I had to write for myself.
04:24And I always imagined that's what I'd be doing after the Colbert Report because that was an acting job.
04:31And when I got this, at first I was like, no, I can't go do that job.
04:34That's that's I'm not a stand up.
04:36I've never been myself.
04:37My mom had started to be an actress.
04:39I got the bug of.
04:42Wanting to perform by hearing her talk about it.
04:46She had she had been accepted to CIT, Carnegie Institute of Technology, now Carnegie Mellon, to that program.
04:53And then got very sick and had to delay going for a year.
04:58And then right as she was getting better, my father asked her to marry him.
05:03And she said yes and had 11 children rather than having an acting career.
05:07I was at Northwestern University.
05:08And this guy named Chris Path, who I was friends with there, said, hey, there's this thing in Chicago called
05:16the Herald Improv.
05:17They're doing it at this club called Cross Currents under the Belmont Hell.
05:22And it sounds really interesting.
05:23Do you want to go check it out?
05:25So I went.
05:26And the first night I saw it, I had a deep feeling.
05:30And I don't know why, but I thought I have to do this.
05:34I was drawn to it immediately.
05:36And it wasn't just, you know, that I was lazy and you didn't have to learn lines, but that was
05:41attractive.
05:42But I loved it.
05:43There was a guy I saw on stage that first night named Dave Pasquese, who's an incredible performer.
05:47And I saw him and I went, oh, I kind of want to, I don't know what he's doing up
05:51there, but he's got a secret.
05:54And I would like to know what that secret is.
05:56And so that was a, maybe that might be the moment that turned me into sort of the direction of
06:01what the rest of my career was.
06:02Stephen.
06:03John.
06:04How are you?
06:04You know, in this new spirit of bipartisan compromise in the Senate, is there still a lot of partisan bickering
06:10over witnesses and trial procedure?
06:12No, John.
06:13Now it's over merchandising and product placement.
06:16I was at the Daily Show before John got there.
06:18Craig Kilburn leaves.
06:19We don't know who's going to take over for the Daily Show.
06:22And then it gets announced that it's Jon Stewart.
06:26And Evie and I are watching like, I don't know, maybe Entertainment Tonight or something like that.
06:31And it's announced that it's going to be Jon Stewart.
06:34And Evie says, Jon Leibovitz, he's not funny.
06:40And what I didn't know was that she had known Jon when he first came to New York to be
06:45a comedian.
06:46And she goes, and Jon would be the guy at the party, not talking to anyone, like nursing an Amstel
06:51light in the corner.
06:52And she was like, no, his roommate was the funny one.
06:55And Jon was just this quiet guy who like, never, never over his voice.
06:58And then later when I finally met Jon in person, first of all, Jon, at his press conference, there was
07:05a press conference at Comedy Central to announce that Jon Stewart was going to be the guy.
07:09And Jon and I hadn't met at this point.
07:10And I said to my producer at the time at The Daily, I said, wait a second, isn't the sort
07:18of thing that we at The Daily Show would go cover?
07:20Aren't we self-important enough that we would think whoever our new host is, is going to be, why aren't
07:25one of us there in the press gaggle?
07:27Because I knew there was going to be one at this press conference at Comedy Central.
07:31And they said, you want to go?
07:32You can go.
07:32So I went over there, got the cube that said Daily Show on it and put on my little tie.
07:36And I'd be like that and got the lander and everything.
07:38And I stood up and I said, Stephen Colbert, Daily Show, can you please address, I said to Doug Herzog,
07:46the president of the company.
07:47This is for a president of Comedy Central, Doug Herzog.
07:50Mr. Herzog, could you address how Jon, being named today the host, affects my ability to get that job?
07:59And Jon looked to Doug Herzog and said, you told me he wasn't funny.
08:04And that's how we met.
08:07And then afterwards, I went up and said, hey.
08:09And then it turns out we knew a bunch of people.
08:11He was like, wait, you know Evie McGee?
08:14I said, I know her very well, actually.
08:16And then I wasn't there for almost the first year of Jon at the Daily because, you know, writing, producing
08:23and starring in Strangers with Candy, which we did not know how to do.
08:27And so we would work 24 hours a day.
08:28Whenever I was back, we'd have a good time together and say, can't you come back?
08:31I'm like, hey, minute shows.
08:33When the doors open that big, I come flying back.
08:35Because here's the thing.
08:36The Daily Show with Craig Kilburn was good.
08:39You know, it really made a name for itself and great writers and producers and a great game and everything.
08:43But when Jon came, it turned into a totally different beast.
08:46He turned it into something where he invited us to mean what we were saying or rather to do satire,
08:53which is not quite the same thing as jokes about current events.
08:56He invited us to do satire.
08:59And that was really attractive to me.
09:02And so I flew back to work with him and we immediately hit it off.
09:07The first thing I came back for was the Republican convention in Philadelphia in 2000.
09:13And then I never left again.
09:14I came back for that.
09:15And then I was there solidly for the next five years.
09:17This is the very first time I'm sitting behind my new desk.
09:20Isn't this beautiful?
09:21Jimmy, can we get a shot of this?
09:22This was a happy accident.
09:23This gig was never the goal.
09:25I mean, I love the hype.
09:28I mean, I grew up on Johnny Carson and I was first generation David Letterman.
09:31Like, his first year in Late Night was my first year in college.
09:36And so we perfectly, you know, overlapped.
09:38I was just a core audience for him.
09:40Just for the record, I'm not replacing David Letterman.
09:43His creative legacy is a high pencil mark on a doorframe that we all have to measure ourselves against.
09:48They basically offered it to me.
09:50And then four months later, Dave stepped down and they said, hey, we meant that.
09:54Do you want to do it?
09:54And I went, yeah, I do.
09:55But in between, I basically did four months of therapy about, hey, why wouldn't I want to do this?
10:01My sister Mary was sort of the deciding factor for me.
10:04I would have talked to my mom about this, but she had passed at this point.
10:08And so nobody knew that I had been offered this job by my family.
10:12And I asked my sister Mary, I said, Mary, could you come up?
10:14She lives in D.C.
10:14I said, could you come up to New York?
10:16I just want to talk to you about something.
10:17She said, sure.
10:18So she gets on the train.
10:20She comes up the next day and she goes, what's going on, kiddo?
10:22Well, you know, Dave is stepping down.
10:25And she just burst into a huge smile.
10:27And I said, okay, okay, Mary, if this show works out, CBS should send you a bouquet of flowers
10:35because I'm going to take the job because you just smiled.
10:37Her happiness for me getting the gig is the thing that really sealed it for me.
10:41You wrote me a letter after my mom died.
10:43And in it, you said, I hope you find peace in your grief.
10:46When Anderson came in to talk to me for his show, I know that his mother had passed recently.
10:52And I had written to him about that.
10:55And I didn't know he was going to talk about it.
10:57But he brought it up and we talked about it and had a good conversation, I thought.
11:03Your dad was killed in a plane crash.
11:05You were 10 years old, along with your two brothers, Peter and Paul.
11:07I was out of the country when it actually went up and my daughter joined us.
11:12We were family vacation in Iceland.
11:14She goes, dad, did you see what's going on online?
11:17It was like, there were like 10 million people who had seen it in the first 24 hours or something.
11:21I was very surprised.
11:22I had no idea that, I mean, it makes sense because everybody experiences grief if you're lucky,
11:28you know, if you love someone enough to feel the great loss of that.
11:33But I was very surprised because it's not something that I had talked about publicly.
11:43And it felt innate to my view of the world.
11:47But I didn't realize that experience that I had had would be so meaningful to other people
11:53because so many other people experience it.
11:55It seems obvious and a very simple thing to realize, but it did take me by surprise.
11:59You're dressed like a pearl?
12:00Because the 30th anniversary is pearl.
12:02For the people out there who do not know, this is actually, tonight is actually our 30th anniversary.
12:08Part of the joy for the audience is that she takes the piss out of me because she sure can.
12:14Do we ever fight?
12:15Oh, I know.
12:18Did you not read my email that I sent you?
12:20We've got to make some decisions about whatever it is.
12:22No, we don't really fight.
12:23We don't really have Donny Brooks.
12:25She's great company.
12:26I try to be equally good company.
12:29I don't think I am as good company as she is.
12:32We laugh a lot.
12:34She's the best laugh.
12:35She's the laugh I want to get more than anybody else.
12:37That's the best.
12:40We grew up in the same town.
12:41Like, wow.
12:43I must be doing okay.
12:45I can't believe.
12:46I can't believe.
12:48I can't believe.
12:58It's still December 26th, but my friend Scott Weary.
13:01He said, no, man, you got to ask her before Christmas because she's going to want to show
13:05that ring on Christmas morning to everybody at church.
13:08I said, you're absolutely right.
13:10So December 22nd.
13:12I remember when my daughter Madeline was born.
13:15She was born in September in Chicago.
13:18And so by the time we were taking her out in the world, it was getting chilly.
13:23Her head in her little buggy and just tucked in and fondled with just only her little face
13:29showing that little thing and walking her along.
13:32And I remember walking her outside and going, that's a tree.
13:36That's a tree.
13:37That blue thing, that's the sky.
13:39Those are clouds and we're going, I can't wait till you can talk back.
13:44And, you know, people say like, oh, there are certain ages that are perfect.
13:48You know, like six is perfect, you know, or like right before they become a teenager and
13:53they still think you're pretty great, you know, like 11 or something like that, or 12
13:57or something like that.
13:58But having an adult child, you know, if you've got a good relationship with them, is the best
14:05to lose an argument with an adult child over something you thought you knew about?
14:11I mean, if you can take it, it's pretty great.
14:14I think my son turned in his last assignment today, his thesis, his senior thesis.
14:19I think he got turned in today.
14:20But the last week of the show is Monday.
14:23He graduates.
14:24Thursday is my last show.
14:25And Saturday, my brother gets married.
14:26All my brothers and sisters and then husbands arrives or everything are coming to the last
14:29show.
14:29And then we're all getting on the train to the next day and going down to D.C. to go
14:33to Tommy's wedding.
14:34The next day, focus is not on me.
14:36Focus is on my brother.
14:37So much better.
14:38And we'll get drunk and we'll sing.
14:40We all think we have good voices.
14:42That's the great danger of our family, especially the men.
14:45They really think we have good voices.
14:48We'll get drunk and we'll sing on the dance floor.
14:49It'll be great.
14:50I want to thank everybody who reached out to me over the weekend, including one text from
14:54an unknown number offering a high-paying IT work-from-home job for only two to three hours a day.
14:59Yes, I am very interested.
15:02I love going out every night and talking about what happened today.
15:06Because, again, it's a selfish endeavor.
15:08I want the audience to feel better.
15:10I'm the host.
15:11It's like I'm hosting a party.
15:12That's the idea.
15:14But I'm also getting a lot out of it.
15:15We're all getting a lot out of it.
15:16I'll miss that as much as I'll miss the audience, that camaraderie of us feeling better about
15:21our day, being able to talk about it.
15:23So that's it.
15:24I'm gone.
15:25Just like...
15:27I hope they laughed.
15:28I hope they felt better at the end of the day.
15:30I mean, that's it.
15:31We're there.
15:31We're the last thing you see.
15:33You know, a lot of things happen in a day, but we bat last.
15:37And so we get the last take that people hear before they go to bed.
15:43And I hope it made their day better.
15:44And so we're there.
Comments