If, as is widely anticipated, the final – and fatal – guest on The Colbert Report will be The Grim Reaper, he will be dragging off not just one of America’s finest political satirists, but also one of the few actually entertaining interviewers to be found on US TV.
‘Stephen Colbert’, as the comedian Stephen Colbert’s blow-hard Bill O’Reilly-esque alter ego is known, is widely agreed to be one of the funniest, gutsiest and sharpest satirical creations in the 21st century. Just his 2006 roasting of a distinctly unamused George W Bush at the White House Correspondents Dinner (the person who booked him didn’t realise ‘Colbert’ was actually a parody of a right-winger) would have been enough to grant him legendary status, never mind nine years of a late night talkshow that has been never anything less than hilarious and frequently brilliant.
There are plenty of funny talkshow hosts on US TV: Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Fallon, Colbert’s “Papa Bear” Bill O’Reilly (although admittedly his comedy is generally not intentional) and most of all, Jon Stewart, who launched ‘Colbert’ on The Daily Show. But only ‘Colbert’ could provoke consistently surprising and often illuminating interviews out of his guests, from the famous (his interview with Pussy Riot was a notable delight, revealing their heretofore unknown wittiness) to the less so (on the much-missed ‘Better Know a District’ segment, a Brooklyn legislator, representative Yvette Clarke, said that slavery still existed in Brooklyn in 1898). Where Stewart often seems barely aware of what his guests are on for, and compensates by lobbing them softballs, Colbert takes real pleasure in engaging with his interviewees and using his persona to either show up their fallibilities or to reveal their strengths. It will be fascinating to see how Colbert maintains this on the Late Show without the crutch of ‘Colbert.’
His palpably genuine geekish delight in his musical guests made the usually taciturn likes of Radiohead downright giggly. Colbert himself has musical talent coming out of his ears. Most fans have seen his delightfully larky musical parodies, but he can do much more than that. In 2011, I saw him in a one-off production of Sondheim’s Company alongside Patti LuPone and Neil Patrick Harris, and his performance of the beautiful song Sorry / Grateful was deeply moving.
A few years ago, I was lucky enough to get a ticket to a taping of The Colbert Report. Along with a bunch of other fit-to-burst-with-excitement New Yorkers, I straggled into the Colbert studio on the far west side on a cold winter’s afternoon, and made sure to bag a front-row seat. I wanted to see the metaphorical strings on the marionette. Thrillingly, Colbert suddenly appeared – but it was Colbert, not ‘Colbert’, reassuring us not to worry if he seemed rude to the guest, it was all just a joke, but apologies in advance for everything he was about to say. At first, it was unsettling to see him without his invisible mask, but he was such a sweet guy that, ultimately, the brief pre-show chat stayed with me longer than anything he did on the show. I’ll miss ‘Colbert.’ But I’m really excited about Colbert.
