“I love the grind of a daily show, I love a live audience”.
Advertisement
Mr. Colbert said one of the reasons he chose September 8 as a start date is because it’s the traditional start of the presidential campaigns. “So right now, I’m just dry-Trumping”.
Colbert said at the Television Critics Association’s summer press tour. “I used to be exhausted at the end of every interview from going through the maze in his head before I said anything, fast enough so the audience couldn’t tell. And I also pray that nobody puts that candle anywhere near his hair”. “That’s much closer to how I learned my craft”, Colbert said. “That’s just theology. I want to get to the religion!” “I like George Clooney because he’s a brilliant actor, a great director and he cares about the world”. “I don’t think anything I’ve done on my last show or this show is necessarily traditional, other than what the pieces are”, he said when we asked him how he planned to approach the opening of his show.
“CBS has asked nothing of me other than I fill an hour every night Monday through Friday”.
Stephen Colbert is positively itching to get on the air. “I can’t wait for that to be the only guy you see”. Later, in a smaller scrum with reporters, Colbert was asked if he thought Trump actually had a shot of winning the election “Honestly? Made him cry!” when retiring host Jon Stewart teared up during the last tribute to him. “So that I can play with them”.
He’d done everything he could with his “Colbert Report” persona, he said, and Colbert is obviously looking forward to being able to show his genuine interest in his guests.
“I want politicians of all stripes, intellectuals, writers, people in sports”.
“When you’re interviewing people you don’t know what’s going to happen”.
The marquee at the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York is ready and so is its new occupant. You couldn’t tell it was a theater and now you can.
Besides this frustration, he said, his primary emotion in the countdown to taking David Letterman’s 11:35 p.m. slot is anxiety. Among the physical changes from Dave’s decades-long reign: the host desk will be found across the stage.
Advertisement
Meanwhile, don’t expect Colbert to get caught up in the kind of bitter late-night wars that existed when Leterman and Leno held down their thrones. “I wish I could’ve done better than George Clooney, but he’ll do as the first guest”, Colbert said. And It doesn’t sound very amusing…. “Competition’s not that fun for me”. “I hope everyone has success”. That was the most energetic part of the show for me, and now I can just talk. He said CBS Entertainment chief Nina Tassler’s main advice to him was to simply continue what he had been doing on The Colbert Report. It also served as an exercise for him and his staff, because “that’s the speed at which you have to do it”. That guy who can’t stop laughing, that’s the real Stephen Colbert. But the character was obviously draining mentally, as he discovered this summer while shooting remote segments for Late Show.
