Stephen Colbert has spent the last several months in a delicate dance of looking back and looking forward. He signed on for an LOTR movie, he had sweet goodbye moments with Emma Stone and more, and he’s done interviews trying to wrap up this portion of his career. Most recently, he called landing The Late Show as David Letterman was stepping down a “happy accident,” and shared the sweet story behind why he ultimately decided to sit behind the storied desk.
How Stephen Colbert And David Letterman “Perfectly Overlapped”
Colbert set the stage for his connection with David Letterman. The two men are only 17 years apart in age, and Letterman was just getting rolling when the other late night host was coming of age. They then were tied together years later when the fate of The Late Show was laid out.
This was a happy accident. This gig was never a dream of mine. I mean I love, I grew up on Johnny Carson, and I was first generation David Letterman. Like, his first year in late night was my first year in college. And so we perfectly overlapped. I was just a core audience for him. They basically offered it to me, and then four months later Dave stepped down. And they said, ‘Hey, we meant that. Do you want to do it?’ I went, ‘Yeah, I do.’
It seems like it would have been an easy decision to make. Colbert already had plenty of experience in front of a TV camera at that point, having been on The Daily Show and then leading The Colbert Report for nearly 10 years. But network TV late night was a whole other budget behemoth (as Late Night fans would later learn), and signing on for the role was a big deal for the funnyman.
The actor told People he went to therapy for “four months” to make sure that signing on as Letterman’s replacement was what he really wanted to do. Part of the problem is that he really wanted to talk to his mother, whom he was very close to, but she had passed away by this time. So, instead, he called up his sister, Mary. Luckily for CBS, Mary “sealed the deal” for the late night host.
So, nobody knew that I had been offered this job but my family. And I asked my sister Mary, I said, ‘Mary, could you come up?’ – she lives in D.C. – ‘Could you come up to New York? I just want to talk to you about something. She said, ‘Sure,’ she gets on the train. She comes up the next day, she goes, ‘What’s going on?’ ‘Well, you know, Dave is stepping down.’ And she just burst into a huge smile. And I said,’ OK, OK Mary. If the show works out CBS should send you a bouquet of flowers. Because I’m gonna take the job because you just smiled.’ Her happiness for me getting the gig is the thing that really sealed the deal for me.
The year 2015 was an exciting time. The first episode of Colbert’s Late Show was up 203% over the same date the previous year. Colbert joining sparked a ratings race with Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon that would continue over the years. What wouldn’t continue was a massive amount of cable subscribers. As those numbers fell off, so did ad revenue. By the end, The Late Show was losing $40 million a year, a number CBS recently confirmed. The show wrapped up last week after months of lead-up to the moment, but when it was done, it was done. Colbert even said the crew had to be out of CBS studios very quickly when it was all over.
I don't know that the Colbert who talked to his sister Mary knew the end would be quite like this, but I'm glad he still gets to hold onto that fond memory.
