If you want to quickly and accurately gauge just how high the anticipation levels are for Stephen Colbert’s Late Show hosting gig, which begins on Monday, you need simply to scan the headlines: the New York Times call him “The Late Night Hope”; Big Think declared him “the Hero Late Night Fans Deserve”; Vanity Fair reckons he will become “the Walter Cronkite of Late Night”; even his bandleader Jon Batiste “Could Change Late Night”, according to the New York Observer. No pressure, then.
To a casual onlooker, such wild hype might seem excessive, even counter-productive, especially when you consider that early test runs of Colbert’s shows have indicated that he doesn’t stray too far from the format established by his predecessor David Letterman. And yet, in another sense, it’s entirely justified: Colbert attracts so much media fascination because he is, ultimately, fascinating. Over the past decade no one else in entertainment has matched him for intelligence, invention or comic daring.
Anyone looking to get a sense of just how smart Colbert is would do well listen to his episode of Working, the Slate podcast in which professionals outline their working day (sounds dull but it is actually fascinating). Recorded two months before the Colbert Report – the nightly satire show Colbert hosted for nearly a decade – ended, the podcast sees Colbert explain precisely how he and his staff put an episode of the show together, beginning when he wakes up and takes in the day’s breaking stories, and ending long after the show has concluded taping. Even if you’re unfamiliar with Colbert or his show, the podcast makes for an engrossing listen, providing insight into the high-wire act that any show constructed on the fly requires.
Yet what’s really remarkable about the interview is Colbert himself, who flits between ideas – on media, the nature of comedy, the mindset of the fictional version of himself that he plays on the Colbert Report – at a pace that is nearly impossible to keep up with. By the end of it you understand what critic Andy Greenwald, who interviewed Colbert in 2009, meant when he said: “The character is famously quick. The performer is Usain Bolt.”
To get a sense of Colbert’s skills of invention, meanwhile, you need look no further than the Colbert Report itself. The “Stephen Colbert” of that show – a note-perfect parody of a bumptious, myopically patriotic Republican political commentator – had the potential to be a one-note joke that got old fairly quickly. Yet Colbert and his writing staff managed to string the punchline out over nine years of the Colbert Report.
Colbert’s character became deeper and weirder with time – witness his strange preoccupation with bears – and the show found new ways of using him. Over the show’s run the character of “Stephen Colbert” appeared at the White House Press Correspondents Dinner, where he delivered a notorious takedown of President George Bush (sitting a few yards away), a House judiciary committee subcommittee, where he testified about migrant workers, and even Baghdad, where he performed for the troops.
Now, Colbert has to reinvent himself once again, ditching his persona for something real – or as close to real as late-night TV will allow. For all the general enthusiasm for Colbert’s transition to late-night network TV there have been a few lingering doubts expressed by critics over whether Colbert will be able to leave “Stephen Colbert” behind, whether he can do sincerity as convincingly as he did snark.
Yet that viewpoint not only ignores the fact that Letterman himself regularly expressed as much of the latter as the former, but also that, even in character, Colbert displayed plenty of attributes that augur well for the Late Show: a gift for spontaneity, a fondness for extravagant stunts (most notably his creation of a Super Pac), and an ability to draw out entertaining back-and-forths with guests, who might not have been considered terribly attention-grabbing.
Indeed, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to declare Colbert late-night TV’s finest interviewer during his time on the Report. His interviews were certainly more engaging (see his Morrissey chat for a great example) than the empty celeb schmoozing of Jimmy Fallon and Jay Leno, and Colbert displayed far more of an enthusiasm in his subjects than Letterman, who frequently seemed uninterested in the people he was speaking to.
The identity of the guests in the first fortnight of the Late Show – Joe Biden, Jeb Bush, Ban Ki Moon, tech entrepreneur Elon Musk – suggests a more intellectual, more politically inclined talkshow than that of its competitors. Some critics have suggested that, in the buildup to election season, such unabashed braininess could play well with audiences. Equally, it’s easy to imagine viewers opting for the less taxing celeb-stunt-heavy shows of Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel. The Late Show with Stephen Colbert might bomb horribly, or it might soar, but either way, it’s likely to make for interesting viewing.
