For the first seven years of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” its band, then led by Jon Batiste, was called Stay Human. As an imperative, what do those words mean?
The coffee company Lavazza’s slogan contends “Pleasure makes us human,” which is demonstrably false. “Pleasure is an animal phenomenon,” Arthur Brooks noted in a convocation address at Benedictine College last year, titled on YouTube “Why Are Catholics So Happy?” It contrasts with satisfaction, which Brooks defined as “the joy that you get from an accomplishment after struggle. Only humans want to struggle.”
This is an insight that Colbert, Brooks’ fellow Catholic, understands profoundly. Discomfort is his drug of choice. He has often displayed his enthusiasm for moments of embarrassment, from braving extended on-air silence to making one of his last shows a “Worst of” episode, featuring clips and stories of segments that didn’t go as planned. He has chosen to interview experts on Moby-Dick and macroeconomics while grappling with the g-forces of Six Flags’ Nitro roller coaster. In 2023 he powered through an entire day of rehearsals—and a taping!—while in excruciating pain from what turned out to be a ruptured appendix.
Even on a healthy day, being the host of a nationally televised, nightly comedy show is grueling, and Colbert has been at it for more than 20 years. He’s persevered, at least in part, to taste hardship’s rewards. When his first eponymous program, “The Colbert Report,” was on Comedy Central between 2005 and 2014, Colbert took to calling it “The Joy Machine.” Like many things in his life as an entertainer, the moniker (since claimed by the latest “Late Show” band, headed by Louis Cato) was part joke, part sincere. Colbert ribbed staffers by invoking it when the slog got particularly hard, he said in 2015. Yet, he added, “Somehow when it was hardest, it would often feel the most joyful.”
Comedy is fun, but Colbert’s conception of joy stretches far beyond making people laugh. In 2019, Anderson Cooper’s mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, died at 95. Colbert sent a letter of condolence, which prompted Cooper to raise the subject of grief when he interviewed Colbert some weeks later. Their exchange was like few things seen on TV, so alive with honesty and vulnerability that it could be called holy. After Colbert pushed back gently on Cooper’s belief that his life’s tragedies warped him into someone he was not “meant to be,” Cooper read from an interview with GQ in which Colbert said he loves “the thing that I most wish had not happened”—the death of his father and two brothers in a plane crash when he was 10—and further quoted J.R.R. Tolkien: “What punishments of God are not gifts?”
“Do you really believe that?” Cooper asked, fighting tears. With a smile both loving and almost apologetic, Colbert answered, “Yes. It’s a gift to exist.”
Last fall, Cooper recalled on “The Late Show” how the earlier conversation “blew my mind” and helped him arrive, in his 50s, at an ability to experience “true joy,” paradoxically by allowing himself to feel the pain of his losses.
While Cooper’s encounter with Colbert was especially powerful, resonant moments have been common on “The Late Show.” Sometimes such moments hinged on matters of faith. Often they sprang from the potency of literature, especially poetry; in Anthony Hopkins’s recitation of Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” or Ian McKellen’s stunning Shakespearean performance earlier this year. All these moments seem born of the attentive, intelligent presence Colbert brings to the proceedings—which transmutes the chemistry between host, guest and audience into something riveting, at once intimate and communal.
Being present is another prerequisite to joy, which Colbert has described as “the expression of the love of the moment that you’re in right now. And the love of the person that you’re with right now.” When he talks to a guest, he typically exudes that delight. In his monologues, love is a less dominant flavor. Though Jon Stewart asserted this week that opposition to Trump was but “a minute portion of the Joy Machine,” one could argue less political content would have served “The Late Show” better—not because it would have appeased the president but because it sometimes dragged jokes to ugly places. Asked by Cooper, “Can you love your enemies?”, Colbert offered with a laugh, “You certainly should…. I’ve seen people do it.”
Since Peter, people have found disciples more endearing for their flaws. Colbert tends to flag his imperfection whenever he discusses his faith, and you get the sense that the snatches of literary and biblical wisdom he recites from memory are lessons he’s eager to revisit—for example, words from the poet Robert Hayden: “We must not be frightened or cajoled into accepting evil as our deliverance from evil. We must keep struggling to maintain our humanity, though monsters of abstraction threaten and police us.”
Plugged into worlds so vividly imagined by Tolkien and Eliot, Colbert seems able almost to look upon the magnetically alluring Ring, or the handful of dust that is a glimpse of terror, and remind us of such things. They are warnings, but warnings imply hope, right ways and wrong ways, good and evil. Meaning.
Without joy, life in its difficulty is “just a machine, and it will grind you up,” Colbert has said. Machines are everywhere, but despair is not an option.
In his talk at Benedictine, Brooks challenged his listeners: “You want to be a Catholic missionary? You have an obligation to work on your happiness, so that you will magnetize yourself and the world will follow you.”
With an emphasis on work and happiness, this is what Stephen Colbert—comic, evangelizer, human—has done.
— Marie Glancy O’Shea
A Final Moment of Gratitude
Last night, as the final “Late Show” opened, Stephen Colbert spoke directly to the audience. He said that although he and his team enjoyed doing the show “for” the audience, they loved doing the show “with” them. His bandleader, Louis Cato, called this an “emotional reciprocal relationship.” Even in “The Late Show’s” final moments on air, Colbert focused on gratitude and the people at home who made his show a success.
Saying goodbye to “The Late Show” is hard for many of us. I’ve found myself struggling to put into words exactly what made Colbert’s show and presence on TV so inspirational in my own life. On paper, there’s not much connecting the two of us. He’s almost 40 years my senior and much more experienced as a comedian and performer. Yet we are united in two key traits: a desire to make others laugh and our Catholic faith.
Although other comedians and even current late-night hosts are Catholic, few are as outspoken about the importance of their faith as Colbert. He is also willing to question the church when appropriate and is steadfast in his beliefs. He is always ready to stand up for what he believes in.
Colbert’s unapologetic faith was admirable to a young Catholic like myself looking for work in entertainment. It often feels like Catholics are the butt of the joke in entertainment and comedy spaces, and while Colbert was willing to crack a few jokes about the idiosyncrasies or sometimes archaic practices of our faith, he was always willing to engage with Catholic spirituality in an unabashed manner.
I’ve had the pleasure of seeing “The Late Show” live, in person, twice. The first was an ordinary episode featuring the comedian Thomas Middleditch, and the second was a live episode responding to President Trump’s address to Congress last March, featuring Pete Buttigieg. This second episode is the one that has stuck with me. Not only did Colbert and Buttigieg provide expert analysis of the address, but they also made the audience laugh in a moment that could have been the farthest away from funny. What Colbert does so well in these moments is balancing information and warning with true laughs and good feelings in the midst of darkness.
The final weeks and months of “The Late Show” have been used for this same pursuit of information and laughter. Colbert did not back down in the face of the cancellation but instead used his platform to continue speaking his mind and standing up for the beliefs he found important. And he handled these difficult moments with grace, often willing to turn the other cheek and be grateful even in moments of struggle. Although plenty of jokes have gone after CBS and its parent company Paramount, Colbert has also shown gratitude to the companies that have put on his programs for over two decades. As he said in a recent New York Times interview: “I’ve really liked working with CBS. They’ve been great partners. And I’d like to end it that way…. I feel so much better to be ‘grateful for’ than to be ‘mad about.’”
The final episode very much led with gratitude. Although many of Colbert’s friends made small cameos, he chose to celebrate what “The Late Show” had done over the past 11 years with a relatively normal episode—albeit one with Paul McCartney as your final guest.
It is hard to imagine that Colbert’s show won’t be remembered fondly alongside the greats of late-night. Although the show tapes in the same location and shares a name with its David Letterman-led predecessor, it is undoubtedly its own program. The show’s tone and feel are like the man himself, steady and warm. It invites the audience in and leaves them laughing. The show never tried to break the mold of late-night comedy, but it didn’t have to do crazy things because Colbert’s approach to late-night comedy was already his own.
The “Late Show” closed with Colbert and McCartney singing a rendition of “Hello Goodbye,” while “The Late Show” crew joined them on stage. The camera then cut to Colbert and McCartney shutting off the lights to the Ed Sullivan Theater. Colbert went out in a classy manner, focused on the people who made “The Late Show” happen.
There are many lessons I could take away from Colbert’s time on “The Late Show.” The one that I seem to keep coming back to is to be unapologetically yourself. Colbert did not compromise on his beliefs during any of the show’s years. He was willing to question authority. He was willing to be forward with his faith. He was willing to be kind. I am reminded of Conan O’Brien’s farewell speech from his final episode of “The Tonight Show” in 2010: “Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.”
The same lessons can be applied here. As Colbert finishes his tenure, it’s clear by the number of celebrities, politicians and artists who have spoken out in support of “The Late Show” that Colbert’s kindness has driven his time on TV. Beyond the jokes and commentary, I believe that will be his enduring legacy.
— William Gualtiere
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