Larry Wilmore surprised to get Colbert’s slot
Larry Wilmore, named on Friday as host of “The Minority Report,” the show that will fill the 10:30 p.m. slot on Comedy Central, thought the time had passed for him to receive his own late-night show.
“I wasn’t sure where I fit into the landscape,” Wilmore said in an interview. He had produced a pilot for a politically oriented satirical show for Showtime in 2012, and when that was not picked up, he took stock.
“I’ve been in the business for a while,” Wilmore said. “I really thought the window was closed.
“And usually there’s a certain age you have to be.”
That age is not 52, Wilmore’s age.
And yet, there Wilmore was, just days ago, sitting in Jon Stewart’s office, hearing Stewart — the man who had put Wilmore’s performing persona on the television map in the role of “senior black correspondent” on “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” — describing his idea for a show to replace Stephen Colbert’s hit “The Colbert Report.”
The new show would be called “The Minority Report With Larry Wilmore”; it would consist of a collection of sharp young minority comics discussing topics in the news; and all it needed was Larry Wilmore as host. “Are you in?” Stewart asked. “My mouth hit the floor,” Wilmore said. “I was like, ‘Y-y-y- essss?’”
Fans and television-industry executives were less surprised by Stewart’s choice. Wilmore created “The Bernie Mac Show” and wrote for and produced “The Office.”
“The reaction has been great,” Wilmore said. “It seemed that when David Letterman announced he was retiring, everything started to move.”