Stephen Colbert becomes the second-ever permanent host of The Late Show as The Late Show with Stephen Colbert premieres tonight (September 8) at 11:35PM on CBS.
The former Colbert Report host will be dropping his familiar routine from his previous show, and the new one will introduce audiences to the “real” Stephen Colbert.
But who is that, exactly?
“I promise you, if you’re wondering who the real Stephen Colbert is, there’s a super cut online of me laughing, me breaking character the entire time,” Colbert told a room full of press this summer at the Television Critics Association Press Tour.
“That’s me. I’m laughing at our jokes. What I do with the show is we do the show for each other all day, and it’s my job and my privilege and my responsibility to translate to you, the audience at home, what we already did for each other. That guy who can’t stop laughing, that’s the real Stephen Colbert. I can’t wait for him to be the only guy you see,” he promises.
Dropping the character gives Colbert a chance to really interact with his guests. “My character was actively ignorant about them,” Colbert admits. “I think one of the reasons why I most wanted to drop the character is that I felt I had done everything I could with him ‑‑ or everything I could do with that show, other than have my honest interest in my guest, which is almost constant. And so now I feel actually more freed up. That was, in some ways, the most energetic, the most exciting part of the show, to me. And now I don’t have to hold back at all. I had to put everything through, like, an occipital CPU up here to live‑render what my character would think about what the person just said, but still have my intention behind it. Now I can just talk,” he says.
Will Colbert succeed? Chances are good. We will find out for ourselves tonight.
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert airs nightly at 11:35PM on CBS.
