Stephen Colbert Reveals Whether He'd Ever Return to Acting
Stephen Colbert is opening up about his career.
The 60-year-old Late Night host got candid in a cover story for Entertainment Weekly, out now.
During the conversation, he spoke about transitioning to a late night TV show, asking his guests about their early gigs, and whether he’d ever return to acting again.
Keep reading to find out more…
On making his transition to late night: “I was determined to not do a monologue. I thought, ‘I’m not a stand-up. I’m an actor.’ And then I fell in love with the monologue. You just need to relax, have a good time, and follow your instincts in terms of the stories you’re interested in.”
On questioning guests about their early jobs: “There are some young people who got very successful very early, and obviously I wish them ill. But I love the people who had to suffer.”
On interviewing politicians and the upcoming election: “With politicians, I feel a different obligation to ask the questions that I want to ask, not the questions they want to be asked. It’s not like I want to be adversarial, but when you interview a politician, you can’t edit anything they want you to edit.”
On the upcoming 2024 election: “When the election’s going on, there’s this news story every day. Everyone pretty much knows what the story is. You don’t have to explain much to them. Everybody cares, and nobody dies.”
On the 2020 election: “Everybody cared, but people did die — not just in the attacks on Jan. 6, but a million people died because of the negligence in the response to COVID. So, this time around, the stakes are very high, and we’re having trouble agreeing on what the story is.”
On returning to acting: “It’s not like I want to drop the hammer on this woodshed that we work in here and go run off back to the footlights. But if there’s something that I used to do that I don’t do anymore, it’s acting. I miss that.”
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