Stephen Colbert on His Rise to Fame and Becoming a Cookbook Author (October 2024)

Summary

Summary of "Stephen Colbert on His Rise to Fame and Becoming a Cookbook Author" (October 2024)

Podcast: Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist
Host: Willie Geist
Guests: Stephen Colbert and Evie Colbert
Release Date: August 10, 2025

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1. Introduction and Background

Willie Geist opens the episode by introducing Stephen Colbert, highlighting his illustrious career transition from "The Colbert Report" on Comedy Central to hosting "The Late Show" on CBS. Geist mentions the surprising announcement in July regarding the potential cancellation of Stephen's show, attributing it to Paramount's stalled media merger influenced by political factors and Stephen's outspoken criticism of the Trump administration.

Notable Quote:

"Stephen and I sat down for this conversation well before that news... it's going to be mostly deviled eggs and shrimp paste."
—Willie Geist [03:39]

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2. The Genesis of the Cookbook

Evie Colbert delves into the origins of their new cookbook, "Does This Taste Funny?". The idea was sparked during the COVID-19 lockdown when the Colberts found themselves confined at home in South Carolina. With restaurants closed and reliance on home-cooked meals, Stephen and Evie began revisiting and rediscovering old family and local recipes, which laid the foundation for their cookbook project.

Notable Quote:

"We started rediscovering all these old recipes, these family recipes. And then somebody asked us to write a cookbook."
—Evie Colbert [04:54]

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3. Charleston, South Carolina: A Culinary and Cultural Influence

Evie paints a vivid picture of Charleston, emphasizing its rich history, culinary excellence, and unique cultural atmosphere. She highlights the city's deep-rooted traditions, seafood-centric cuisine, and the serene yet vibrant environment that has significantly influenced their cooking style.

Notable Quote:

"Charleston's something of a land that time forgot... It's so on the water that it's kind of in the water."
—Evie Colbert [05:08]

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4. Family Traditions and Personal Stories

The conversation shifts to personal anecdotes, where Evie shares heartwarming and poignant stories about her family. She recounts her childhood in Charleston, the tragic loss of her father and two brothers in a plane crash on September 11, 1974, and how these experiences shaped her resilience and outlook on life.

Notable Quote:

"I was 10 when my father and my brothers died in that plane crash... it took me that long to come to that realization."
—Evie Colbert [50:43]

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5. Creating the Cookbook Amidst Challenges

During the pandemic, the Colberts implemented a chore wheel at home, which included rotating cooking responsibilities. This necessity led them to explore local produce and traditional recipes, fostering creativity and collaboration in the kitchen. Evie humorously describes early attempts at recipes, such as mishaps with shrimp paste and red rice, highlighting the trial-and-error process involved in developing their cookbook.

Notable Quote:

"We ended up living during COVID... We just dove into the surf with a knife in my teeth and pulled out a sword."
—Evie Colbert [08:26]

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6. Signature Recipes and Culinary Philosophy

Evie discusses some of their standout recipes, including red rice and shrimp paste, explaining their significance and the stories behind them. She emphasizes the importance of authenticity and tradition in their cooking, aiming to preserve and share the culinary heritage of Charleston.

Notable Quote:

"Red rice is the thing that I would make more than anything else... it's half stolen from Alison Roman."
—Evie Colbert [09:58]

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7. The Role of Comedy in Personal and Professional Life

Evie reflects on her journey in comedy, from being a high school class clown to performing at Second City in Chicago. She shares insights into her struggles with depression and how creating and performing comedy served as a coping mechanism, ultimately leading to her success on shows like "Strangers with Candy" and "The Colbert Report."

Notable Quote:

"Actually writing jokes with my friends is the thing that keeps me off the antidepressants."
—Evie Colbert [34:23]

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8. Overcoming Career Challenges and Embracing Success

The Colberts discuss the highs and lows of their careers, including Evie's transition from struggling performer to a celebrated comedian. They touch upon the importance of persistence, creativity, and support systems in navigating the entertainment industry.

Notable Quote:

"I never wanted to walk away from improv... creating on a daily basis is my Xanax."
—Evie Colbert [34:23]

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9. Addressing Grief and Finding Purpose

A significant portion of the discussion revolves around Evie's personal experiences with grief and loss. She shares her profound conversation with Anderson Cooper, where she elucidates how accepting grief has allowed her to connect with others and find spiritual nourishment. Evie's narrative underscores the therapeutic value of sharing personal pain and fostering community support.

Notable Quote:

"Talking about it is the opposite of... it actually opens the light."
—Evie Colbert [52:43]

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10. Conclusion and Final Thoughts

The episode wraps up with heartfelt acknowledgments and expressions of gratitude. Evie and Stephen emphasize the collaborative nature of their cookbook project, the importance of family traditions, and the enduring bond that sustains them through personal and professional challenges.

Notable Quote:

"I learned the only healthy response to that... was given to me by my mother."
—Evie Colbert [50:38]

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Insights and Takeaways

• Culinary Heritage: The Cookbooks serve as a medium to preserve and celebrate Charleston's rich culinary traditions.

• Resilience Through Creativity: Both Evie and Stephen exemplify how creativity and passion can help navigate personal tragedies and professional uncertainties.

• Importance of Community: Evie's experiences highlight the significance of sharing personal histories to foster community support and mutual understanding.

• Intersection of Comedy and Healing: Comedy is portrayed not just as entertainment but as a vital tool for coping with life's adversities.

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Key Takeaways for Listeners

• Embrace Tradition: Rediscovering and honoring family and local traditions can lead to meaningful projects and personal growth.

• Persistence Pays Off: Navigating and overcoming career challenges is essential for long-term success and fulfillment.

• Sharing Personal Stories: Openly discussing personal struggles can provide comfort to others and promote collective healing.

• Balance Creativity and Stability: Maintaining a creative outlet is crucial for mental health and resilience.

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This episode offers a deep dive into Stephen and Evie's journey through fame, personal loss, and culinary creativity, providing listeners with an intimate look at the inspirations and stories behind their latest cookbook.

Transcript

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[Willie Geist]

Hey guys, Willie Geist here with another.

[Stephen Colbert]

Edition of the Sunday Sit Down Podcast. My thanks as always for clicking and listening along. Got a good one for with the host for nine more months anyway of the late show on CBS, Mr. Stephen Colbert. Now, Stephen and I got together well before several months before, the surprise announcement he made on the air in July that CBS effectively had canceled his show. He's got a run through May of next year. A lot of people believe this is mixed up in politics, as Paramount, the parent company to cbs, was seeking to close a massive media merger that needed approval of the Trump administration's fcc. Of course, Stephen Colbert has been a long and vocal critic of President Trump and his administration. So a lot of discussion about what was really behind this move. But as I say, Stephen and I sat down for this conversation well before that news around the release of a new cookbook with his wife, Evie. Stephen, of course, took that job on the Late show about a decade ago, 2015, after David Letterman announced his retirement from the Late show, an elevation from the Colbert Report in which Stephen Colbert on Comedy Central was playing a character kind of this cable news blowhard that he introduced on the Daily show when he got that job in 1997, so gets to the Late show and suddenly, for the first time in his career, actually has to play himself. Had been an improv actor before that. So Stephen and I talked about his life, his rise through comedy. Born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina, where he met his wife Evie. Had tragedy in his life, as you'll hear about a commercial plane crash that killed his father and two of his brothers. Stephen, the youngest of 11 kids, a fascinating guy, a smart guy, a funny guy. So sit back, relax, and enjoy. Now a conversation with Stephen Colbert on the Sunday Sit down podcast.

[Willie Geist]

Stephen, good to see you, man.

[Evie Colbert]

Hi, Willie.

[Willie Geist]

So happy to see you.

[Evie Colbert]

Happy to have me on?

[Willie Geist]

I am, yes.

[Evie Colbert]

I'm so happy for you that you have me on.

[Willie Geist]

I can see how you put your guests at ease just with this sort of rapport, this repartee.

[Evie Colbert]

You don't want to start with a handshake or anything off the top. Yeah.

[Willie Geist]

Good to see you.

[Evie Colbert]

Good to see you, too.

[Willie Geist]

The one for camera, not the one that was off. So when I told people I was coming to interview you today, they said, oh, that's great, Colbert. What are you doing? A little politics, little comedy? I said, no, it's going to be mostly deviled eggs and shrimp paste.

[Evie Colbert]

Hell, yeah.

[Willie Geist]

And here we are. Tell me about the genesis of this cookbook.

[Evie Colbert]

The need for food is the number one. I'm a carbon based life form and I have to. I have to feed the beast every day. Evie and I, it's, it's. It's me and Ev. Yes, it's me and my lovely wife Evie. There we were, like everybody else, stuck in a house for Covid with our children. You know, you couldn't go out to have somebody else cook your food at a restaurant. We were back in South Carolina to help take care of her folks, which were right down the street from our place in South Carolina. We were there with the. The people who taught us how to cook when we were younger and the ingredients in the low country of South Carolina that were the basis of all of our cooking. And we started rediscovering all these old recipes, these family recipes. And then somebody asked us to write a cookbook. We said, can I do it with Evie? Because it would be much more fun to do with her because I could make her do all the work and still put my photo on the front.

[Willie Geist]

Smart. Smart. Yep. Take the credit.

[Evie Colbert]

Yeah.

[Willie Geist]

And most of the cash, I would assume. Yeah.

[Evie Colbert]

Yeah.

[Willie Geist]

So what is it, Stephen, about Charleston? Because for people who haven't been there, spent time there. It is a unique and wonderful, not just food town, but cultural town. What is it about Charleston that makes it so special?

[Evie Colbert]

Charleston's something of a land that time forgot. First of all, it's like a city under glass. Have you ever been.

[Willie Geist]

Oh, yeah.

[Evie Colbert]

It's incredibly beautiful, incredibly obsessed with its own history, Never wants anything to change. You know, like the Charleston joke about how many Charlestonians does it take to change a light bulb? Why would you change it? The old light bulb was fine. And the other joke is one joke. The other joke is how many Charlestonians does it take to change the light bulbs? Like, one person to change it. One person to say the old light bulb was better at nine people to mix the drinks.

[Willie Geist]

That's my kind of town.

[Evie Colbert]

Yeah, exactly. I don't know. It's a party town. It's a town that loves a good cocktail. It never misses cocktail hour. It's got incredible, incredible food. Food right there in the water. It's so on the water that it's. It's kind of in the water increasingly, actually, sea walls notwithstanding. We both grew up, you know, catching our own fish, catching our own shrimp. Shrimp. Catching our own crab, and then learning to cook it. It's one of the best culinary towns in the world. And when we were there, very quiet now it's very busy now. There's a lot of tourists, and I can understand why don't stop going. I understand it's good for the economy. But when we were kids, I mean, I grew up on a dirt road on James Island, South Carolina, with dogs sleeping in the streets like it was very to kill a mockingbird. And even when I was 13, we moved downtown, which is where Evie grew up. I rode my bike down the middle of the street. I rode my skateboard down the middle of the street. There was no worry that anybody was going to hit me. There was just nobody there. There was nowhere to go on all day to get there. Nothing to buy and nothing to buy it with. We were too poor to paint, too proud to whitewash. Those are all things that describe the Charleston of my youth.

[Willie Geist]

Sounds like a country song.

[Evie Colbert]

Yeah. Yeah. So during COVID we were all stuck at home, like everybody was. And our eldest daughter, who at the time was 26 or 25 or something like that, she goes, I am not living at home with you as your child. This is gonna be a roommate situation. And as such, I've made a chore wheel. And so one of the things which was smart, because then we weren't we weren't like. They weren't having to, like, resist our presence in the house.

[Willie Geist]

Right.

[Evie Colbert]

But one of the things on the chore wheel was everybody cooks a different night. And so we all had to, like. Oh. We had to rack our brains for all the different things that we knew. And it was mostly local produce because you couldn't get anything at the grocery stores. You remember beginning of COVID you couldn't get a chicken leg. So go catch fish. Go get food from the produce stands and stuff like that. Evie's laughing at me as if that's all made up. That's not made up.

[Willie Geist]

Evie, is he making this up?

[Evie Colbert]

Okay, move on.

[Willie Geist]

You're embellishing.

[Evie Colbert]

I'm making the story better. That's what authors do.

[Willie Geist]

So you caught all your.

[Evie Colbert]

Can we at least get her out of my line of sight so as I'm lying to Willie? Guys, she's not fact checking me.

[Willie Geist]

Caught your own fish.

[Evie Colbert]

Thank you.

[Willie Geist]

Slaughtered your own animals. Farmed your own vegetables.

[Evie Colbert]

100%. Plowed the field. Got it. Yeah, exactly. Shot the ducks. Everything. Harvested the morels from the forest.

[Willie Geist]

Go back to the original days of Charleston, South Carolina.

[Evie Colbert]

Exactly. Just dove into the surf with a knife in my teeth and pulled out a sword. Flame cloth. Just slaughtered it right on the beach, started cutting it up. By the time it had a bucket with some limes and some cilantro and salt. By the time I got back to the house, it was ceviche. That's how we lived during COVID Oh, my God. You don't understand.

[Willie Geist]

I think we got what we need here.

[Evie Colbert]

Good.

[Willie Geist]

Thank you.

[Evie Colbert]

Thank you very much.

[Willie Geist]

I'm super into this book, as you can tell. I've bookmarked a bunch of pages. I love shrimp paste. Which I understand was part of your first date. You made it wrong.

[Evie Colbert]

Or do you like the name Paste?

[Willie Geist]

I like the name because I've never. It's so unappetizing.

[Evie Colbert]

It is shrimp paste. It's ground up shrimp until they're a paste. Enjoy. No, it's a big thing. It's shrimp pate. Right. Is really what it is. But the English, you know, the Charleston's so English. Like, it's so Anglophile, which I forgive them for, but it's the simplest thing you can make. It's just shrimp and mayonnaise and onion, and I managed to mess it up. 1. The first thing I made for her, I went and bought canned shrimp.

[Willie Geist]

Oh, come on.

[Evie Colbert]

Which was. Which was the real problem.

[Willie Geist]

See, you should have fished them yourself.

[Evie Colbert]

Just snatched them out of the Water?

[Willie Geist]

Yeah.

[Evie Colbert]

Like a grizzly with a salmon. Like I do. Like, as manly Southern men do.

[Willie Geist]

Do you? I know this is a really hard question because I marked a few, but do you have one or two favorites in here, like your. Go to recipes.

[Evie Colbert]

Red rice. Red rice is the thing that I would make more than anything else in this. Cause growing up in South Carolina, I went to Stiles Point elementary, this little public school on James island. And everyday, red rice, which the ladies there would cook up in barrels with paddles because they had to feed all these lousy kids. And that recipe reminds me of the one I had when I was a kid. And it's half stolen from Alison Roman.

[Willie Geist]

Okay.

[Evie Colbert]

She has a shallot pasta recipe where it's a lot of caramelized shallots and anchovies and red pepper. And I went to make it with her when she was on my show. And it's supposed to be over bucatini pasta, which I'm morally opposed to, because bucatini pasta is like a spaghetti that's got a hole in the middle.

[Willie Geist]

Yeah.

[Evie Colbert]

So you can't suck it in.

[Willie Geist]

Right.

[Evie Colbert]

Because you go to, like, suck in that. Like, you're sucking in a piece of spaghetti, and you just end up breathing through a piece of pasta, which is kind of a bait and switch. And you can't do lady and the Tramp with it.

[Willie Geist]

Right?

[Evie Colbert]

Right. If you and I were lady and the Tramping with buckatini right now, we would just be breathing each other's carbon dioxide, and we'd eventually pass out. That's not romantic. So, anyway, so I saw that sauce.

[Willie Geist]

You were more passionate about bucatini than most people are about anything, and I respect that.

[Evie Colbert]

Well, there are certain foods that steer you wrong. I want to get to shrimp tails in a second. Can we talk about shrimp tails in a second?

[Willie Geist]

I've. Yeah, I've heard about your. I agree with you, by the way.

[Evie Colbert]

I saw that. That. That jam that she made with shallots and tomato paste and, you know, and anchovies. Everything I said that would be great in a rice as a red rice. And you know who disagrees with me? Allison Roman. She doesn't think so.

[Willie Geist]

Oh, really?

[Evie Colbert]

No. I'm gonna have to send her some. Make her literally eat her words.

[Willie Geist]

No bucatini ever, under any circumstances.

[Evie Colbert]

Just don't. Friends don't let friends eat bucatini. One of the reasons we wrote this book is that if this does nothing. If this book does nothing but spark a national conversation about whether shrimp should have their tails on them when they're served to you in a sauce, then I've done my job.

[Willie Geist]

I mean, you are driving this message hard. I've watched some of your other interviews. This is something that you believe in. You want to see change. You see a problem, you want to fix the problem.

[Evie Colbert]

Do you not think it's a problem, Willie?

[Willie Geist]

I think they're totally unnecessary sometimes.

[Evie Colbert]

Unnecessary or destructive because you go, you get like a beautiful. Like, let's say you. You get a beautiful pasta that's got a red sauce in it. It's got shrimp in there. Should there be tails on the shrimp?

[Willie Geist]

No, of course not.

[Evie Colbert]

Okay.

[Willie Geist]

Because why am I in the pasta with knife and fork?

[Evie Colbert]

But you've watched that for years and never done anything about it. You've never taken a stand. You're like, that's somebody else's problem. Fine. I'll have my staff take the shells off. And I do the staff of the Today show. Remove your shells. See, that's your east coast elitist. Not caring about the other people out there who don't have a deshelling staff.

[Willie Geist]

Now, let me throw a different shrimp format at you. Shrimp cocktail serves as a little bit of a handle to get into the cocktail sauce.

[Evie Colbert]

If you have to. You can leave the tail on a shrimp or shrimp cocktail because the illusion is you're getting less shrimpy by not touching the shrimp.

[Willie Geist]

Right?

[Evie Colbert]

The shrimp meat with your fingers. Yeah, but the tail is just as shrimpy as the shrimp, maybe even shrimpier.

[Willie Geist]

It is. And then you've got that collection of fishtails on the plate.

[Evie Colbert]

It just looks like you've loaded up some toenail clippings around the edge of the bowl. Is that what you want? Are they little trophies up there? Are we supposed to mount these on a board in my den? Why do I have any part of an animal that I'm not eating on my plate?

[Willie Geist]

Have you?

[Evie Colbert]

I don't want. I don't want a hoof on my burger, Willie. Do you? No. But again, you saw the problem and did nothing.

[Willie Geist]

Have you seen any?

[Evie Colbert]

You know what they said? All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing. And you sat idly by.

[Willie Geist]

Why are you blaming me for this?

[Evie Colbert]

Cuz you're the one who admitted that you knew there was a problem and said nothing. You were silent. Okay, okay.

[Willie Geist]

I'm ashamed.

[Evie Colbert]

Qui techie consentiri. Okay? The maxim of the law is silence gives consent. That's what you did. Do you not understand? Look in the mirror.

[Willie Geist]

Have you taken this to any chefs restaurateurs I have.

[Evie Colbert]

I have given an earful and an eyeful to Ina Gartner. I was about to say I was giving an earful in a garten, but her name is Ina, so I want to give an eyeful. Ear in a garten.

[Willie Geist]

Yeah.

[Evie Colbert]

Yeah. I've told Ina you got in her house about it. I got all up in her grill, I believe is how she described it.

[Willie Geist]

And how did she respond? Is she with you?

[Evie Colbert]

She apologized. She didn't apologize. No, she would never do that. Ina would never do that.

[Willie Geist]

She's the best. Let's establish. Come on.

[Evie Colbert]

100.

[Willie Geist]

She loves this book too.

[Evie Colbert]

And we stole a recipe from her, too.

[Willie Geist]

Borrowed. Inspired by or you want to just go with stone?

[Evie Colbert]

All artists steal. Genius. All artists borrow. Geniuses steal.

[Willie Geist]

That's right.

[Evie Colbert]

I forgot who said that.

[Willie Geist]

That's right.

[Evie Colbert]

I think I did.

[Willie Geist]

Just called yourself a genius too, so that was good.

[Evie Colbert]

I've been waiting all morning for you to do it. I was getting panicky that nobody would. No one's chanting my name in here. My name isn't on a sign. There's no applause.

[Willie Geist]

It's a little quiet, isn't it?

[Evie Colbert]

Yeah. Yeah. I'm getting panicky.

[Willie Geist]

No affirmation yet today. This book obviously is a lot about family too, right? Yeah. Inspired by your wife's mother, by your family, all the traditions in your house.

[Evie Colbert]

But really dedicated to my mother in law, Patty McGee, who's a fantastic hostess. Like a real classic southern hostess. And always, not only good at it, but always ready for it, always up for it. Always had a plate of cheese biscuits put out. Always ready to bring somebody in for a glass of tea or something stronger.

[Willie Geist]

Mm, a cheese biscuit. Hers, I can imagine, are perfection.

[Evie Colbert]

It's delicate. It's very hard to do a proper southern cheese biscuit. It should look like you're about to have like a pecan sandy or something like that. It should be like really nice and flaky and everything like that, but savory and spicy with like a little egg wash on top. She would make thousands of them and her family would distribute them around Charleston for her at Christmas time. That's the first thing I ever had from any McGee family member was I went to pick up Evie for our first date on December 26th. December 26th, 1990. 1990. December 26th, 1990. Feast of Saint Stephen, in case anyone out there is paying attention. And Evie was late. She wasn't ready to come downstairs. And so her father said, what can I get you, son? And I said, I'll take. Well, I said, what do you have? Smart. Okay. Because I didn't know. Because this isn't a mature Southern man.

[Willie Geist]

Sure.

[Evie Colbert]

And I can't ask him for like, you know, I'll have a screaming orgasm. I'll have a Slippery Nipple. I'll have an Alabama Slammer. No. Because I'm a kid, like in my 20s, you know. And he said, I have bourbon and I have vodka. I'm like, all right, no nonsense. And I said I knew I couldn't ask for a bourbon and ginger ale because that's kid stuff. This is a mature Southern man. So I said, I'll have a bourbon and something. And he goes, I have water and I have soda water. And I said, I will have soda water. And I was drinking that. And I believe your mother had brought out a tray of cheese biscuits when Evie walked in.

[Willie Geist]

So that you associate that with one of the great moments in your life.

[Evie Colbert]

Pure pleasure. That's my favorite thing. It was a Christmas time. So for Christmas, for me, it's a bourbon and soda water and cheese biscuit. That's it.

[Willie Geist]

When you think about your household, your family, your parents, any of the foods in here take you back the other.

[Evie Colbert]

End of the meal. Fudge. Fudge. My mom and there's a competition. There's a. Well, it's not a competition, it's a disagreement.

[Willie Geist]

My.

[Evie Colbert]

My mom, you know, mother of 11.

[Willie Geist]

Kids, yeah.

[Evie Colbert]

She'S very gracious, but she wasn't much of a cook because she was not taught to cook by her mother. And she didn't really have an opportunity to explore more than volume cooking, you know. And she started having children in 1945 and ended in 1964. We're perfectly the baby boom generation. And this was the heyday of processed food. And I don't think my mother had a recipe that she didn't get off the back of like a bottle of chili sauce or like a packet of Lipton soup or something like that, which is fine with us. Cause who doesn't love the salt? And so she only had one recipe. I think that was really her family's. And that was. She got it from her mother. And it was a fudge recipe. And it's not like the fudge you would normally. This is not like vacation fudge that gets cut off a brick, that gummy stuff. And I don't know why fudge is associated with vacations.

[Willie Geist]

That's exactly what you mean.

[Evie Colbert]

I don't understand. In the beach town, I don't understand why. But this is crisp this snaps, and it's super grainy. It's very specific, and, you know you've got it. Right. Is that when you scratch it against your teeth, like when you scrape a little bit of it, you immediately think, I have. I should see the dentist. That literally, it just. Your teeth, your fillings, just transmit a message right. Straight to a dental hygienist saying, you got it 100%. You gotta come in and do something about that. But my mom never wrote it down, and so there's a million versions. Everybody in the family has what they remember mom telling them. Like my mom. We went through so many old cookbooks to try to remember and old. Old card catalogs to try to remember some of these old recipes. I love the old way of writing down recipes, which is things like a good amount of butter.

[Willie Geist]

Yeah, yeah, right.

[Evie Colbert]

You know. Yeah, exactly. A generous dollop of cream. What does that. What does that mean? Try writing a cookbook with words like that. My mom's recipe with the fudge just said, how much butter? Oh, about the size of a medium egg. Everything. Eggs come in medium. I didn't realize that very average chickens gave these eggs.

[Willie Geist]

Right.

[Evie Colbert]

So anyways, that was it. But in my mind, I'm always thinking, I guess that's between. That's not quite a jumbo, Right? Yeah.

[Willie Geist]

And yours came out the best. Is there consensus about that? In the fantasy?

[Evie Colbert]

There is a definitive. No, there's no consensus, or else there'll only be one recipe in the book.

[Willie Geist]

There's myself, the champion.

[Evie Colbert]

I did not proclaim myself the champion of the book. Anyone who makes these recipes declares my recipe the. The correct one. Isn't that right? Didn't my. Yes. They're telling me I'm right. The people.

[Willie Geist]

She wasn't listening.

[Evie Colbert]

The people who work for me say I'm right. I don't have people to take my shrimp tails off for me, Willie, But I do have people to stand around. You're right, chief.

[Willie Geist]

That's right.

[Evie Colbert]

That was funny. Hey, buddy. With his name on the building. Still got it.

[Willie Geist]

And look where it's gotten you. Yep.

[Evie Colbert]

Having people yell how to the Today show with Willie Geist.

[Willie Geist]

We did it.

[Evie Colbert]

Y.

[Willie Geist]

You did it.

[Evie Colbert]

I. I love working for NBC.

[Willie Geist]

It's good to steal you for a few minutes, I got to tell you.

[Evie Colbert]

Not at all. Not at all. Big fan of the peacock. Yeah.

[Willie Geist]

It's good, right? Do good stuff over there. It's good. We do good stuff over there.

[Evie Colbert]

I'm a fan. I'm not being facetious.

[Willie Geist]

Yeah, Okay. I was waiting for that. I thought that was the setup.

[Evie Colbert]

No setup.

[Stephen Colbert]

Hey guys, thanks for listening to the Sunday Sit down podcast. Stick around to hear more from Stephen Colbert right after the break.

[Huggies Advertiser]

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[Josh Mankiewicz]

I'm Josh Mankiewicz and I hope you'll join us for season four of Dateline Missing in America. In each episode of Dateline's award winning series, we will focus on one missing persons case and hear from the families, the friends and the investigators, all desperate to find them. You will want to listen closely. Maybe you could help investigators solve a mystery mystery.

[Evie Colbert]

Dateline Missing in America. All episodes available now. Wherever you get your podcasts this week.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Only, I'll Meet the Press. As the fight in Texas intensifies over redistricting and its impact on the midterms, Kristen Welker sits down with Governor J.B. pritzker and former Attorney General Eric Holder, plus Senator Lindsey Graham. Only on Meet the Press. Listen to the full episode now. Wherever you get your podcast.

[Evie Colbert]

Welcome back.

[Stephen Colbert]

Now more of my conversation with Stephen Colbert.

[Willie Geist]

So the title of the book is does this Taste Funny? Which is very clever. And we're talking about.

[Evie Colbert]

Thank you. You know, I worked for Clever Central for many years. I used to work at clever clubs.

[Willie Geist]

Oh yeah.

[Evie Colbert]

Oh, yeah.

[Willie Geist]

You've thrived in the world of cleverness.

[Evie Colbert]

There's nothing more damning you can say in a pitch. Like if your writers are pitching you jokes at the beginning of the day and someone has this elaborate pitch and he's like, that's very clever. Meaning what else did you do? That had a lot of pieces to it, but it never got to a joke. It was so complicated. That must have taken you so long to say that much without ever getting to a punchline. It was very clever of you to do that. So thank you.

[Willie Geist]

I think the taste of such a clever piece. Clever.

[Evie Colbert]

Does this taste clever? Never been so insulted in my life. I can't believe I just said nice things about NBC.

[Willie Geist]

I know.

[Evie Colbert]

And you come at Me with. That's very clever.

[Willie Geist]

I had to get us back to level here.

[Evie Colbert]

Thank you very much.

[Willie Geist]

So talking about family and recipes and all that.

[Evie Colbert]

Yes.

[Willie Geist]

Big family.

[Evie Colbert]

Eleven. Eleven. Eleven kids. Yes.

[Willie Geist]

So where does comedy come in? I've heard from a lot of kids from big families, whether it's Conan or somebody else, where it's just like, I gotta get noticed somehow.

[Evie Colbert]

Conan claims he has a big family.

[Willie Geist]

Performative.

[Evie Colbert]

How many kids?

[Willie Geist]

Not next to you.

[Evie Colbert]

How many kids in the family is it six? I wanna say something like that. About half the Brady Bunch. That's the Brave. That's nothing. You couldn't run a farm with that many kids. You couldn't harvest potatoes back on the old sod with only six kids. Yeah.

[Willie Geist]

Full football team.

[Evie Colbert]

Exactly. Same thing as Bobby and Eunice.

[Willie Geist]

Identities. Yeah, yeah, that's right.

[Evie Colbert]

Eleven kids. Eleven kids, yeah.

[Willie Geist]

Yeah. So where does the comedy come in for you? At what point in your life?

[Evie Colbert]

I'm the youngest of 11. It's not just 11 brothers and sisters. I'm the youngest of 11 and. And my sisters, who are all older than I am, my sisters say they're. It was remarkable that I ever learned to walk because they carried me everywhere. So I always had an audience. And, you know, comedy was, you know, it was a humorocracy. Every, like, whoever the funniest person was in the room at the moment was the king. And as a kid, my brothers and sisters would say, like, I was very quiet because I was just watching them to see, like what? Well, I just thought they were the greatest. I thought they were the funniest. I still think they're the funniest people in the world. Evie says, to this day, when I get together with brothers and sisters, I get really quiet because I just want to watch. They're just so funny to me.

[Willie Geist]

Right.

[Evie Colbert]

Are you fact checking me on that one, too? You did say that a long time ago. Okay.

[Willie Geist]

No, but that dynamic is still there.

[Evie Colbert]

Yeah. I just think they're incredibly funny and I learned a lot from them. Like my brother Billy, who's no longer with us, unfortunately, though his beer brisket is in this book. Is that he. As a kid, he made me watch WC Fields or kept me up to watch WC Fields and the Marx Brothers.

[Willie Geist]

Yeah.

[Evie Colbert]

And taught me, like, you know, guy walks into a bar kind of jokes.

[Willie Geist]

Yeah.

[Evie Colbert]

Stuff like that.

[Willie Geist]

Yeah. So if I asked your siblings who.

[Evie Colbert]

The funniest one in the family was.

[Willie Geist]

Well, what would they say? That's a good question, by the way.

[Evie Colbert]

I don't know. Not you, maybe Jim I don't know. Maybe Mary, maybe Margot. I don't know. Who would they say is the funniest one in the family? Love, Mary. Mary.

[Willie Geist]

Mary.

[Evie Colbert]

My sister Mary. Yeah, yeah.

[Willie Geist]

Would they have seen your life as a comedian from what they saw of you as a kid? In other words, they go, yeah, of course. That's what Stephen did.

[Evie Colbert]

Attention needing attention, I think.

[Willie Geist]

Needs those applause.

[Evie Colbert]

Eager for validation. Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Willie Geist]

So where did you first find the stage? Where did you.

[Evie Colbert]

I first found the stage in high school as a class clown. I was, you know, I went to a very kind of cliquey school in South Carolina, and me and my closest friends were kind of on the outskirts of. Of the society of the high school, you know, out way, way past Pluto in the solar system. We were out in the Oort cloud of our high school. And making people laugh was the first thing that got me invited to parties.

[Willie Geist]

It works.

[Evie Colbert]

It does, it does. Yeah.

[Willie Geist]

Personality actually works, it turns out.

[Evie Colbert]

Sure. I made the football team laugh.

[Willie Geist]

Well, that's what I mean, right?

[Evie Colbert]

Yes. I made the football team laugh and it stopped them from beating me up.

[Willie Geist]

That helps, too.

[Evie Colbert]

That was. That was. Yeah. Keeps slowed down their punch. Just the laughing slowed down the swings.

[Willie Geist]

Gave you just enough time to get.

[Evie Colbert]

Out of the way, just to dodge. Exactly.

[Willie Geist]

What were their actual performances, though? Were you at that point, were you in the plays?

[Evie Colbert]

No, I wasn't. No. I always wanted to, but I was. I don't. I don't know why. I was a little afraid to audition for anything. It wasn't until I was a junior, I did my sister Eileen. Or maybe I was a senior in high school, I did my sister Eileen. George Kaufman, my sister Eileen. I played a Brazilian admiral. My first line was, goes to the New York. I like New York. But the punchline was, now goes to the Brooklyn, which is, I don't like Brooklyn, which is the other which John o' Fenell had. You got a laugh every night. He killed me, that guy. I wanted it.

[Willie Geist]

Where's he now? Right?

[Evie Colbert]

I don't know. Where's Jono now?

[Willie Geist]

We hope for the best. Yeah, no, he's good.

[Evie Colbert]

And so I kind of got that. That was fun. I had the bug doing that. But really, where it changed for me is that I went to theater school. I went to Northwestern University, to the theater program there, because I was going to be an actor, Willie. Yes, an actor. Not just play Hamlet, but to be Hamlet and to be actively miserable at you. Can't you see my depression? Aren't I entertaining to be Gloomy around. And then while I was being all professionally gloomy or training to be a professional gloomy person with a beard. And I wore a lot of black, kind of like this.

[Willie Geist]

Oh, did you?

[Evie Colbert]

I wore a lot of black. I had a be was a poet slash jerk and, you know, sad at people. One of those guys. And I wore eyeliner and briefly, briefly wore eyeliner.

[Stephen Colbert]

You almost goth?

[Evie Colbert]

What?

[Willie Geist]

You're almost goth?

[Evie Colbert]

A little bit. A little bit. I didn't need makeup. I was pale enough. And a friend of mine said, hey, there's this thing downtown in Chicago called the Herald Improv. Del Close. Sean Halpern, the Improv Olympic. Do you want to go see it? So I went to go see these improvised one act plays called the Herald Improv and I fell in love immediately. And I said, I don't know what they're doing. I have to do that. And it's not just because I was too lazy to memorize lines. I really, really wanted to get on stage. And the people I saw Dave Pasquaze, one of the people who's one of the greatest improvisers in the world, he was on stage. And I just wanted to do that desperately. And so I started doing that on a weekly basis. I'd go down on Wednesdays and I would do a set with some friends of mine.

[Willie Geist]

This is while you're at Northwest?

[Evie Colbert]

While I was out of Northwest. Yeah. While I was, you know, studying all the, like me, me, meow. Doing all that. She skis easily beneath the ceiling of stars. Martha and Margaret walked arm in arm to the charming park not far from their father's house.

[Willie Geist]

Still got it.

[Evie Colbert]

No. My God. My less act teacher would be so mad at me right now. I don't have the Y buzz, but I was doing that then. I was actually, you know, quote unquote, gigging, you know.

[Willie Geist]

Right.

[Evie Colbert]

I don't think we got paid. I think we got free beer, which was great. That's great to go do that on Wednesday nights. And then. And that kind of set a hook in me. And then I never wanted to walk away from improv.

[Willie Geist]

And that jumps right into Second City after Northwestern.

[Evie Colbert]

Well, kind of like I was. Second City was kind of wasn't the thing. Second City wasn't pure improv. Back in the day. We were kind of looked down at Second City because they got paid. They got paid and they were sold out every night. And they seemed to be having a good time, you know, and they were.

[Willie Geist]

Gonna go work on snl.

[Evie Colbert]

Exactly. And so. But a friend of Mine was the box office manager. And I went and traveled around for a while. When I came back to Chicago, was sleeping on a friend's floor, had no money. And she said, hey, you can just work at the box office. I need somebody to cover. Jeff Garland was actually the person I replaced. Really? Jeff Garland had been the guy before me.

[Willie Geist]

Oh, wow.

[Evie Colbert]

And he was terrible. He was terrible. There'd be a flashing light of, like, 20 people trying to get tickets. Cause Second City was always sold out. And he would pick up the phone and he would go, hey, look at this. And he would go, ticket, ticket. Tick, tick, tick, ticket, ticket. And he would clear the entire board and hang it up and watch it fill up again. That's the kind of worker he was, all Captain Potato Pants. And so he quit. And I took his place at Second City in the box office. And then I found out that you could take classes there for free. And so I went, well, I want to keep sharp. I want to, like, you know, I'm not in acting school anymore. I'm not. Certainly not getting hired by anybody. I could not get hired by anybody, Willy. I was so gainfully unemployed for so many years. You'll never find old tape of me when I was a young actor doing something embarrassing, because they wouldn't even hire me for embarrassing projects. So as a result, I had to write all my own stuff. Like me and some friends, like Dex Bullard and a couple friends of mine, we would. We would get spaces and write our own shows and put them up and call the press and do it for like one weekend or two. And then we'd usually on somebody else's set like they were building for something else. We would just say, we'll split the box office with you if you just let us use the set you're building for our set. And we would make up a show that would fit on their set. Just anything to be on stage. And after I did that for a few years working in the box office, I got invited to audition for Second City. And here I am talking to Willie Geist. It's a direct line.

[Willie Geist]

There it is. Direct line.

[Evie Colbert]

Well, 100%, though. But there is a direct line from there.

[Willie Geist]

Here were there times, Stephen, and you said nobody would hire you. You couldn't get gigs. You were writing for other people, not things you dreamed about doing.

[Evie Colbert]

Would stop me in the street. Dogs would bark at me, children would run from me. I was ugly and I smelled bad. Yes. That period of time. Let's go back.

[Willie Geist]

Period. How long can we go? Were there Times along the way there when you said, oh, maybe this isn't the thing for me long term. Or, like, every day.

[Evie Colbert]

Every day. No, but really, crisis. Right after I got married, right after I got married, I thought, oh, what have I done with my life? Like, I kind of want to have a family and some sort of normative life, right? And I have, at the time, I have what I think charitably called a nervous breakdown. And my skin's on fire and I cannot sleep. And we're just married. And poor Evie, she goes to work. Cause she's working during the day like humans do. And I'm coming home, about to go on stage at Second City, and I've got a great gig. I'm at the main stage of Second City. Like, people would kill to be on that stage. But I'm walking in circles around the floating couch in our living room. She come home and she says, how was your day? I'm like, you're looking at it. I will have walked around the couch all day thinking, oh, my God, what have I done with my life? I'll never, like, be able to afford a home. I'll never. I'm an improviser. Like, that is not associated with, like, the most stable life.

[Willie Geist]

It's hard to get a mortgage when you're an improviser.

[Evie Colbert]

Improv. How are you gonna pay me? I'll figure it out. And so that went on. That was terrible. That actually went on for a couple months of, like, just. I would just curl in a ball. I'd go to the Second City, I'd curl on a ball, lie down backstage, wait for my queue line, uncurl, you know, I'd uncurl from, you know, that couch. Like the alien, you know, at the end when Ripley's on the skate pod with him. And then I would go on stage, but I felt fine when I was on stage.

[Willie Geist]

Yeah.

[Evie Colbert]

And then that went on for months until one morning I woke up and I realized I felt fine. And I couldn't remember why I would be feeling fine until I realized, oh, we're starting a new show. We're gonna go and start writing a new show. And I went, oh, thank God. There's this thing that makes me feel better. But then I thought, oh, no. So this is what I'm like when I'm not creating something new. So I've never stopped, like, creating from that moment. Because I don't think I would fall back into slough of despond again if I wasn't, like, creating on a daily basis. But I know that that's, you know, that's my Xanax is to also Xanax, if anybody's got any. If anybody brought enough to share. I don't have a subscription right now, but that's what it does for me. Actually writing jokes with my friends is the thing that keeps me off the antidepressants.

[Willie Geist]

So then what's the gig, Steve? Where you go? Okay. I'm gonna be all right. This is a steady job. I think I can make a life out of comedy, and I won't have to circle the couch when I'm not creating.

[Evie Colbert]

I mean, kind of the Colbert report. I was 41.

[Willie Geist]

Yeah, the Colbert Report.

[Evie Colbert]

I had done it for a while. It's like I didn't. Like, this did not hit me as a child. I did not become successful. I did not, you know, burst onto the scene, you know, like Athena from Zeus's head. I did this for 20 years before I got trusted with anything big. I mean, I certainly love doing the Daily show for the years that I got to do it with John before I moved over. But that was still somebody else's gig. And I was kind of part time there. I wasn't always on as much as I loved it. And then I remember. I remember when it looked like the Colbert pour was gonna go, like it was gonna last, and I was like, this might go for a few years. I remember saying to Evie one night, I can't. I can't believe how lucky I am. Not only do I. Am I doing this thing that I love, but I get to do it in the place that I love. I got to do it in New York. I've made my career in New York, which to me was the ultimate goal, not just to have a career, but to have one in New York. And I don't. I have family in Los Angeles, and, you know, it can be a lovely place to go to. But I had. So I resisted the mothership, the pull, the tractor beam that is just the size of the industry out there. I'd resisted for many years. And the fact that I got to do what I wanted and do where I wanted. It felt like the greatest game of Go Fish ever. Got what I wanted.

[Willie Geist]

And for people watching right now going through that, that was about 25 years since you started out, that you got to a point where you said, well, by the time you were like, middle, okay, I'm a little comfortable, or have some stability.

[Evie Colbert]

Yeah. I was clearly 23 or 24 years before I went, okay, yeah, I think I'M going to be okay.

[Willie Geist]

And you stayed with it all that time?

[Evie Colbert]

Well, I didn't know what else to do. No. But I didn't have anything to do. People ask me what I would do if I didn't do this. I said, I think I'd be doing time. I have no other skills. I have nothing to offer the world, Willie, other than. Other than stupidity. With a straight face. That's it. A guy who looks like he's a lawyer but acts like he's recently been on release.

[Willie Geist]

Read as someone who has other skills, and yet you don't.

[Evie Colbert]

That's the false lead of Stephen Colbert. He looks capable. We hired him because he looked responsible. That's actually how I got, you know, I got a job. But I worked for GMA for a while.

[Stephen Colbert]

I know.

[Evie Colbert]

Hello, friends.

[Willie Geist]

I know.

[Evie Colbert]

Now, what were you doing now? I've worked for all three shows.

[Willie Geist]

There you go.

[Evie Colbert]

Exactly.

[Willie Geist]

You were pitching pieces to them.

[Evie Colbert]

I worked for the Dana Carvey show, so I worked for Carvey. And at the time, and I don't know why, you may know why, but GMA used to be on the entertainment side of ABC, not the news side. And in 1996 or 7 or something like that, they switched from being entertainment to news. And as they were panning over the keys and about to weld the door shut between news and entertainment, somebody goes, oh, by the by, before we totally close the store between news and entertainment, do you guys know anybody over there in entertainment on ABC who looks really straight but can be funny, like in a news way? And they said, ask Stephen Colbert. I don't know why they said that, because I hadn't done any of this stuff yet. But I got called in and I met with, I don't know, I think Roon Arland or something. I met, like, the head of news over there, whoever was the head in 96 or 97, and they're like, what would you do if we sent you on a field piece? And I said, I assume there'd be like some research packet. And they said, yeah, yeah. I said I would get with my producer. Yeah, I'd get with the producer. I'd read the research packet and we'd come up with questions, and then we'd go shoot it. And I assume someone would edit it and I'd be involved in, like, voiceovers or something like that. And then hopefully we'll be good. And they looked at each other and went, okay, I think you understand me. I think you understand what's going on here. Do you know why they wanted Me?

[Willie Geist]

Why?

[Evie Colbert]

Because you guys at NBC, at the Today show had added a window. Whenever you guys added a window is when they called me, because they literally said, that window is killing us. Because they've got a window on the world. We don't have a window on the world. We want you to be our window on the world. Oh, okay. And what they wanted me to be is funny the way a local weatherman is funny. I pitched 25 stories in a row. Nothing wrong with local weathermen. I love you 100% weather on the ones, but take an umbrella, pack your patience. We got an Alberta Clipper out there in the night. Okay. Yeah, well, we got a heat dome also. At the same time. Yeah, yeah. It's an inversion layer. Exactly. What's stationary system? So they said, we want you to be the window. And So I pitched 25 pieces in a row, and they said no to 24 of them.

[Willie Geist]

Wow.

[Evie Colbert]

Yeah.

[Willie Geist]

So you got one on the air.

[Evie Colbert]

I got one on the air.

[Willie Geist]

And that was it.

[Evie Colbert]

Yes. It was the Rube Goldberg national competition. Yes.

[Willie Geist]

And were you happy with the piece? Were they happy with the piece?

[Evie Colbert]

No one was happy.

[Willie Geist]

No one was happy.

[Evie Colbert]

No one was happy.

[Willie Geist]

Hence that's.

[Evie Colbert]

And right after that, my manager, James Baby Doll Dexam, said, the great.

[Willie Geist]

Yeah.

[Evie Colbert]

The one, the only, except no substitutes. He said, why don't you go meet these people over at the Daily Show? They're looking for people. And I'm like, oh, what is this show? Why do I. Oh, my God. I was just working for Dana Carvey. Now. Is this cable access? Where am I going? What is this? Like, oh, you like them. You meet him. So. And that's. And I went over there, and they said, what are you doing right now? I said, well, I was on a Carvey show. I was the second city of the Carvey Show. I wrote for SNL for a month, and then. And now I'm a correspondent for Good Morning America, ABC News, where more Americans get their news from any other source, which was their motto back then. I know I'm a company man no matter where I am, Wherever. All right. Stick around for Seth. So. And I said, this is what I do. And they said, you're genetically engineered to do this job like you were grown in a lab to be the Daily Show. And I said, okay. And then my first note I got over there was that I was too jokey. Oh, I was too jokey.

[Willie Geist]

Too jokey at Comedy Central.

[Evie Colbert]

I was too jokey at Comedy Central. So I apologized and tried to joke. Not so much.

[Willie Geist]

Yeah.

[Evie Colbert]

Then I left to do Strangers with Candy.

[Willie Geist]

Yes.

[Evie Colbert]

And when I came back, there was a new host and his name was Jon Stewart.

[Willie Geist]

And that changed everything.

[Evie Colbert]

It did. He got you changed the orbit of the planet and changed the rotation of the earth on its axis. You know how Superman goes backwards. Coastline is saved.

[Willie Geist]

That's right.

[Evie Colbert]

That's what John did for comedy. He's the first. He's the one who told me that he's the first. He's humbled publicly, but in private he goes, you know that Superman thing, that's me.

[Willie Geist]

That's me. Yeah, yeah.

[Evie Colbert]

He's not gonna mind that I told you.

[Stephen Colbert]

Stick around for more of my conversation with Stephen Colbert right after a quick break.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

This week only, I'll meet the press. As the fight in Texas intensifies over redistricting and its impact on the midterms, Kristen Welker sits down with Governor J.B. pritzker and former attorney general Eric Holder. Plus Senator Lindsey Graham. Only on Meet the Press. Listen to the folks episode now, wherever you get your podcasts.

[Evie Colbert]

Taking over the helm of NBC Nightly News, a 75 year old broadcast, it's a great responsibility. Good evening, I'm Tom Yamas. You have to go out there to bring people at home closer to the store. Wildfires continue to be a threat. With that massive hurricane comes the massive response. The best reporters in our business know how to listen. And when you listen, you get the truth. For NBC News, Tom, NBC News, NBC news. I'm Tom Yamas. That's what we do every night. NBC Nightly News with Tom Yamas. Evenings on NBC. Hey, everyone, it's Adriana Brock, editorial director for Shop Today. And I'm so excited to share our summer of savings. All summer long, Today.com has the biggest discounts on the hottest deals. Looking for your favorites in home beauty, tech and fashion. Trust me, you cannot miss miss this. Our shopping experts have found hundreds of.

[Pharmaceutical Representative]

Incredible deals and put them all in one convenient place.

[Evie Colbert]

To save you the hassle, head to today.com summersavings to start shopping.

[Stephen Colbert]

Welcome back now to the rest of my conversation with Stephen Colbert.

[Willie Geist]

No, I could talk to you all day, but you have to go do a show. So let's talk about that job up the street. Letterman steps down. 2014. They announce you as the new host. Come out in September of 2015. Yes. The curtain goes up.

[Evie Colbert]

Yes.

[Willie Geist]

There you are at the Ed Sullivan theater as myself. As yourself. That was I.

[Evie Colbert]

Who the hell is that?

[Willie Geist]

Right?

[Evie Colbert]

Who the hell is that?

[Willie Geist]

That's what I was gonna ask you've never played yourself.

[Evie Colbert]

No, I've all. I've always been acting up until that moment.

[Willie Geist]

Right.

[Evie Colbert]

Yeah. Suddenly I was me.

[Willie Geist]

So was that terrifying?

[Evie Colbert]

I'm not a huge fan of me. It turns out all I knew about me was that I was Abby's house. And so every night, we had Evie someplace. I could see her in the fifth seat back on the row, on the. On audience left stage, right over here. And so I could look at her and go, all right, that's who I am. I'm her husband. That helped a lot.

[Willie Geist]

Because you.

[Evie Colbert]

Not enough, but it helped a lot. It helped. Eventually, about eight months later, I went, oh, yeah, I know what I want to do here, Joe.

[Willie Geist]

But what were those early months like when people were like, not quite sure what he's.

[Evie Colbert]

No, he's not the guy from the Colbert Report. Well, I didn't know either. I didn't know either. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. I was determined not to do a monologue. That was one of the first things. And John Stewart was like, so you want to, like, completely change the form? Like, why'd you take this job? I'm like, I wanted to make something new. And he was like, but it's not. Do it your own way. Do your own monologue. It will be new because it'll be you.

[Willie Geist]

Right.

[Evie Colbert]

And I eventually believed him. And now I wish I could do a 25 minute monologue every night.

[Willie Geist]

Yeah.

[Evie Colbert]

Cause that's it. That's what I love more than anything else.

[Willie Geist]

Right.

[Evie Colbert]

I mean, I like talking to your world leaders, you know?

[Willie Geist]

Yeah.

[Evie Colbert]

Talked to Trudeau last night.

[Willie Geist]

Janet Yellen tonight. Right.

[Evie Colbert]

No, she's got the vid. She's got the Rona. She got the vid. She got the Rona.

[Willie Geist]

Yeah.

[Evie Colbert]

So she can't come, but that's what's.

[Willie Geist]

Great about your show. You'll do big movie star, big. And captain official.

[Evie Colbert]

So we moved up your Kate Winslet. Very similar. Yellen and Winslet.

[Willie Geist]

Audience won't know.

[Evie Colbert]

She would also not have let Jack up on the door.

[Willie Geist]

That was a great.

[Evie Colbert]

But she'd have stats. She'd have stats. She'd have reasons for it. Yeah.

[Willie Geist]

Now that you mention it, Kate Winslet solved that riddle on your show as well.

[Evie Colbert]

She got up on my desk. I remember. And we fit perfectly. It was fine.

[Willie Geist]

And that ended the discussion.

[Evie Colbert]

Sure.

[Willie Geist]

That's it.

[Evie Colbert]

Yeah. It makes Rose kind of bloodthirsty, you know, kind of out for herself. Yeah.

[Willie Geist]

And she was. Yeah.

[Evie Colbert]

Yeah.

[Willie Geist]

Poor Leo.

[Evie Colbert]

She holds the heart of the sea for her entire life and goes, I'm gonna die. Nobody gets it. That's what she said. She had it for 90 years. But after me, Le Deluge, she didn't care. All those people spent all that money, gave her a great story. Got to see, you know, gotta relive those things. And she doesn't give them the heart of the ocean.

[Willie Geist]

So Rose, in your telling, is the villain of Titanic?

[Evie Colbert]

Yes. Yes. This is innocent boy who was seduced by an upper class girl and then murdered in the open ocean. Yeah.

[Willie Geist]

And then you throw in the jewel and double.

[Evie Colbert]

She came off. She got out of this grate is all I know. She got married, she had a family, she has a granddaughter. She rode horses, she flew planes. From what we saw from one of those photos, she lives to be ripe old age. Has the jewel of the ocean the entire time and then throws it away. She's the hero. How is she the hero?

[Willie Geist]

I think you need to revisit that tonight. I don't want to tell you how to do anything.

[Evie Colbert]

She knows how. She knows how. She knows how I feel.

[Willie Geist]

You've ran off.

[Evie Colbert]

Yeah. Have you interviewed Justin Trudeau, by the way?

[Willie Geist]

I have, yeah. He's been on Amazon.

[Evie Colbert]

Unbelievable. I got to keep one eye closed and then blink this one alive. So one of them, one of my retinas survives. He's a good looking man. Yesterday I interviewed Justin Hartley from Tracker. Sure, Tracker. He'll find out when it is. I think it's Sundays.

[Willie Geist]

We'll drop that in later.

[Evie Colbert]

You put a snipe down here for Tracker, NBC will put an ad for Tracker up.

[Willie Geist]

You called for it? Drop it in.

[Evie Colbert]

It's the number one show across all broadcasts. More Americans watch cbs, more Americans watch Tracker than any other news source.

[Willie Geist]

Which is a little bit like GMA's old tagline.

[Evie Colbert]

Sure, something like that. But anyway, I interviewed two Justins yesterday. Two sexy Justins. And that's the privilege of these shows. I got Justin Hartley, who plays Colter Shaw, I don't need to tell you on Twitter. And then. And Justin Trudeau. And because I'm a gentleman, I'm not gonna say which one is sexier.

[Willie Geist]

Yeah, I was gonna ask you, but I know you were a gentleman.

[Evie Colbert]

Also company man.

[Willie Geist]

Because of the loss of your dad and your brothers.

[Evie Colbert]

Yes.

[Willie Geist]

You have become a very powerful voice for a lot of people around the world about grief and loss. I'm thinking about your interview with Anderson Cooper, which I watched again this morning and brought me to tears again this morning.

[Evie Colbert]

The one on his show or the.

[Willie Geist]

Podcast on his show, okay, where he asked you about, you know, the punishment of God and how you could feel lucky in some way, and you explained it so beautifully. Are you happy to be that person in some ways, in the culture where you can give voice to that feeling that so many people have?

[Evie Colbert]

I wouldn't say I'm happy, you know, to be associated with grief, but I am grateful a to Anderson for his projects that he's done addressing this because it's a resource that people desperately need. We don't talk about grief in our culture. We don't have the tools anymore to talk much about it. We don't have, you know, we don't have formalized modes of expressing our grief that lets everybody know what we're going through, even if they don't know the circumstances. You used to know someone wearing black for a year or something, or a veil. They were. They were in a state of grief. So I really admire what he's doing as. As a. As a gift to people who don't know where to go for examples of surviving grief. I'm grateful if what my experience has been is useful to other people. When people say that to me, like they saw the interview with Anderson or any other times I've spoken about it with some of my guests is that when they say that they're grateful, I always say, I'm sorry that you needed it. But I'm glad that my experience, in some ways meaningful to you and gives you some hope that there is a. A spiritual nourishment that can come from accepting your grief and the circumstances of your life. And it can give you a way to look at it that doesn't undermine you, but gives you a foundation on which to build that acceptance that seeing the world for all its cruel and radiant beauty and that combination of both the cruelty of loss, but the radiant beauty of the world in the face, in spite of that loss, is this extraordinary ecstatic tension that I think can A is very moving to experience, but also can sustain you through any dark days ahead to know that someone else has gone through it and that you've used that wisdom to survive your own crises. So, as I said to Anderson, I wish more than anything else that the most tragic events of my life had not happened as anyone would. But I have found the only healthy response to that. I learned. I realized that my healthy response to that, given to me by my mother, who through her faith, accepted the reality of her situation and still loved God.

[Willie Geist]

That.

[Evie Colbert]

There is a way to learn and grow and love other people, especially in their suffering because of that experience. So that's where the gratitude comes from.

[Willie Geist]

How long did it take you to get to that place, that wisdom? I mean, you're a little boy.

[Evie Colbert]

I was 10 when my father and my brothers died in that plane crash in September 11, 1974. I don't know. I might have been between 36 and 40.

[Willie Geist]

Yeah.

[Evie Colbert]

Because before. Before I started the Colbert Report, I had already sort of come to grips with that or had a realization that there is some value that I had not realized that informed my view of the world that had to do with that. And so I can both wish that it hadn't happened and also be grateful for the connection it gave me to other people because it happened. So 26, 27, 28 years. As I said to Anderson, I'm kind of hesitant to tell this story more than once because it sounds like I'm saying, like, oh, it's gonna be fine. Just 30 years. Just 30 years of suffering, and you're gonna be fine. You know, everybody can do it at their own speed, but it took me that long to come to that realization.

[Willie Geist]

But I do think you were talking about this, and that conversation in particular opened people's minds to another way of thinking about it. It did for me, actually. Where you go? No, that's right. I've enjoyed some form of community with people I otherwise would not have and maybe been able to help them in some way as they've helped me and.

[Evie Colbert]

Perceived in other people the truth that they carry with them all the time but don't express, because they think that there is no one who understands it, no audience who wants to hear it. Some people think the grief itself is contagious, so they don't want to hear it or even address it when, in fact, talking about it is the opposite of, you don't go deeper, necessarily, into your grief when you talk about it. It turns what is a cave into a tunnel. You can actually see light at the other end. If you can talk about it, it brings you back out of the darkness. It doesn't shroud you in. It's sort of paradoxical how addressing it doesn't make it darker. It actually opens the light.

[Willie Geist]

Well said. Thanks, man.

[Evie Colbert]

Thank you.

[Willie Geist]

To talk to you.

[Evie Colbert]

Nice to talk to you, too.

[Willie Geist]

I really enjoyed it.

[Stephen Colbert]

My big thanks again to Steven and Evie for a great conversation. You can get their cookbook. Does this taste funny? Recipes our family loves wherever you buy your books. And my thanks to all of you.

[Willie Geist]

For listening again this week.

[Stephen Colbert]

If you want to hear more of my conversations with our guests every week. Be sure to click follow so you.

[Evie Colbert]

Never miss an episode.

[Stephen Colbert]

And don't forget to tune in to Sunday Today every weekend on NBC. You see these interviews in vivid peacock color, your own two eyes. I'm Willie Geist. We'll see you right back here next week on the Sunday Sit Down Podcast.

[Pharmaceutical Representative]

Hey everyone, I'm Jenna Bush Hager from the Today show, and I'm excited to share my podcast Open Book with Jenna. It is back for season two. Each week, celebrities, experts, friends and authors will share candid stories with me about their lives and new projects. Guests like Rebecca Yarros, Kristin Hannah, Ego Wodom, and more. Like a good book, you'll leave feeling inspired and entertained. Join me for my podcast, Open Book with Jenna. Listen now on Apple Podcasts.