The newest king of late night
Stephen Colbert vows to bring humour — and his real persona — to the lineup
NEW YORK — Stephen Colbert is about to turn a corner in his career: onto Broadway at 54th Street.
Having split from cheeky Comedy Central a few blocks away, he will now hold court at old-guard CBS. He will inherit the theatre, time slot and series title (though with an added “The”) owned for 22 years by David Letterman.
Little wonder that Colbert’s disciples — his erstwhile Colbert Nation — wait anxiously to see what The Late Show With Stephen Colbert will be like: How beholden will it be to late-night talk-show conventions stretching back six decades? Will it abandon Colbert’s signature political edge? Can it build on the uniqueness of The Colbert Report, a sui generis concoction Colbert tailored to his skills and passions?
If the early guest lineups offer any clue, he’ll offer a rich blend of talk: Republican presidential hopeful Jeb Bush and Vice-President Joe Biden will appear the first week, along with entrepreneurs Elon Musk (SpaceX and Tesla Motors) and Travis Kalanick (Uber), plus a showbiz mix including George Clooney, Amy Schumer and Toby Keith.
His online spoof of Donald Trump that was posted in June suggests he’s poised to lampoon the 2016 presidential race.
Does he have any marching orders for when he steps onstage Tuesday?
“No one has asked me to do anything,” he says at a reporter’s intimation that CBS aims to plug him into a pre-existing late-night hole. “They have said, ‘Do what you do, but give us more.’ ”
More is certainly on tap. Colbert will air for an hour five nights a week, more than double the Monday-through-Thursday half-hour output he maintained for nine years before exiting Comedy Central last December (and retiring his on-air character, a.k.a. The Character).
“Before, I had four acts,” he says. “Now I will have seven acts ... and a band (led by versatile Louisiana-bred musician Jon Batiste). But it’s not about the pieces. It’s about what you do with the pieces.”
Colbert, 51, comes to The Late Show after establishing himself in the guise of a messianic blowhard who spoofed Bill O’Reilly and his Fox News Channel show The O’Reilly Factor, with maybe a touch of Rush Limbaugh thrown in.
On The Colbert Report he played the host as a jerk, but endearingly “someone who wasn’t AWARE that he was a jerk; a well-intentioned, poorly informed, high-status idiot. I wasn’t sure that I could get all four of those rotations on the ball. But it worked out.”
His was a game of three-dimensional chess, especially with the interviews.
“Talking with a guest, I had to run everything through the CPU up here” — he points to the computer in his noggin — “to grind out a version of myself, instantly, while keeping my intention as a satirist evident inside the Trojan horse of my character’s role as a pundit who trades on divisiveness.” Whew.
Despite this Rube Goldbergian process, Colbert’s interviews were not just funny, but as incisive as anyone’s on TV. With his native observations and inquiries shining through the prism of his onscreen persona, he emerged as a stealth truth-teller.
On The Colbert Report he proved he could do the impossible. But now ...
“Can I do the POSSIBLE?!” he cuts in with a chortle.
He has no doubt that, yes, he can. And to demonstrate, he’s been introducing the Stephen Colbert he will be with his online comedy segments, targeted features like a GQ cover story, and a growing drumbeat of other publicity.
Along the way, he’s learned this brand of possible is easier than he imagined.
“So far I’ve pre-taped at least half- a- dozen interviews as myself,” he says. All the while, The Character “sat on my shoulder, saying, ‘Let ME do it! I can make everything a joke!’ And I would go, ‘No, no, I want to see what it’s like to do it WITHOUT you.’
“I liked those interviews, they were very enjoyable,” he reports. “And I’m not tired when it’s over. I feel great. That’s the most startling thing to me!”
“Whether people will miss The Character too much, I can’t say,” he concedes. But the real guy was far from unexposed all those years. “I promise you,” he vows reassuringly, “you saw me the entire time.”