Truthiness speaks louder than words
Colbert takes on Late Show
This is all you need to know about Stephen Colbert the man and why Colbert is actually an apt choice to follow in David Letterman’s wingtip shoes when the veteran Late Show host steps down in 2015:
In a now- famous, and rare, profile in Vanity Fair, dubbed The Man in the Irony Mask, Colbert let his mask drop and talked about what it’s like to play a heightened, fictionalized version of himself on TV.
Colbert said he drives himself home every night to suburban New Jersey from midtown Manhattan, after taping The Colbert Report, rather than have someone else drive. That way he can decompress, remember who he is and be himself again. The nightly commute gives him time “to become a dad and a husband again.”
That’s telling, because it suggests that when Colbert takes over from Letterman, he’ll host as himself, the husband and father interested in politics, civil rights, the environment and the world at large, reverting to his fictional character only as a regular bit, as Johnny Carson did with Carnac the Magnificent.
Colbert so thoroughly inhabits the skin of his caricature TV creation, the blowhard arch- conservative who hosts The Colbert Report weeknights ( in Canada on The Comedy Network) that it’s easy to forget there’s a real man there, and that man is nothing like his TV persona.
The Colbert Report, despite its hallowed status among young, educated, college- age viewers, is a niche program, designed for a niche audience of late- night viewers and post- Letterman hipsters. Late Show airs earlier in the evening. Colbert’s caricature character, while witty, energetic and wired to appeal to likeminded viewers, is unlikely to fly with a more mainstream audience.
In one of the ironies of the moment, Colbert is friends with Jimmy Fallon, who took over The Tonight Show after Jay Leno’s retirement. Chances are the two will remain fast friends. Anyone who knows Colbert the man knows he wouldn’t have it any other way.