Stephen Colbert Rushes RNC Podium In ‘Late Show’ Convention Coverage Stunt
It will be great if Colbert goes for broke like this (and maybe go a little further like he might in The Daily Show/Colbert Report days) during his whole RNC/DNC coverage run.
In this new era of late night, you might know that stand-up comedy being featured is a much different beast than it used to be in the heyday of Leno and Letterman.
Sensibilities are different, the times, they are a changin’, there are less slots for stand-ups on late night, and a literal “tight five” is a thing of the past. Since comedy is more expansive than it’s ever been and the access, thanks to the Internet, is greater than it has ever been, it’s much harder to stand out.
That being said, Bonnie McFarlane is a good example of someone who bridges this specific gap. She is one of the few women who got to perform stand-up on Letterman and this past week, she just got another great set on The Late Show with its new host Stephen Colbert. As of now, only a few other comedians, Jerry Seinfeld and Nick Griffin, have gotten the distinction of performing on both Letterman and Colbert.
Watch Bonnie’s latest Late Show set and see what we’re talking about here.
As you might be well aware or have heard repeatedly on the news, the upcoming Republican and Democratic National Conventions will be affairs actually worth watching this time around. What is going to happen at them is anyone’s guess, especially at the RNC.
With that in mind, Stephen Colbert and his Late Show team have made a Bingo card generator for each convention that is filled with events likely to happen at either convention such as “27th mention of wall” or “white person speaking Spanish” instead of numbers.
We’ll let Colbert take it from here.
Then, get your convention Bingo card here.
For both the Republican National Convention and the Democratic National Convention, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert will be going live with their coverage of the two events for two weeks.
With the insane climate of this presidential election and the amount of air time that Colbert has, The Late Show has lots of stuff up their sleeve including an appearance by Jon Stewart, a giant musical number, and more.
Here’s where the edge of the Colbert meets the new Colbert on The Late Show.
In response to the U.S. Senate not being able to pass any of the multiple pieces of proposed gun control legislation this week, Colbert “took the gloves off” and laid down some choice trash talk.
This seems personal as Colbert takes a clear side on the issue and especially for the fact that Stephen kind of ignores for a couple of minutes that the show is on CBS and goes a bit blue and salty with the language.
Paul Mecurio, like Stephen Colbert, is an alum of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and has followed Colbert to his new home at The Late Show at CBS.
This past week, Paul got to be the latest comedian to do stand-up on Colbert and showed off why he has such a great comedy pedigree.
For awhile, we were worried that The Late Show with Stephen Colbert was going to forego having stand-up. However, the show has gotten into a rhythm over the last few months of featuring comedians, both accomplished and ones that you definitely should get to know.
NYC’s Marina Franklin is the latest to take the stage at The Ed Sullivan Theater and keep up the stand-up tradition that Letterman originally had going.
In this post-Jon Stewart era of late night, many alumni of The Daily Show have branched out to almost every imaginable corner of the TV realm.
Stephen Colbert is now the host of The Late Show for instance. However, as an interesting contrast, Lewis Black is still regularly contributing to The Daily Show, now hosted by Trevor Noah.
When Lewis stopped by The Late Show, since he’s getting ready for a stand-up tour, Colbert and Black chat about what has kept the rage flowing through Lewis’ segments all these years, through different hosts, at The Daily Show.
Every once in awhile on late night, you get to see a guest that had once worked for the show that they are now being featured on.
It’s always kind of a beautiful moment that shows everything kind of worked out.
The latest instance of this phenomenon is Sam Morril getting to be the latest comedian to perform stand-up on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert after being an intern for Colbert several years back.
One of the recurring segments at The Late Show with Stephen Colbert that works best for us is Colbert’s rundown of events in small towns where his guests are from.
For Nick Offerman, Colbert and Nick go through the calendar of local events in Minooka, Illinois where Offerman grew up.
Of course, the event listings had every bit of small town charm and awkwardly written copy that you have to come to know and love from small town happenings.
Pending some red tape at the Unicode Consortium, an emoji named in honor of Stephen Colbert might become your go to emoji.
Colbert’s raised eyebrow is pretty universal.and, at this point, they should probably made for the perfect source material to make for a new emoji.
TJ Miller appears on to Colbert again to bring a nice bit of weirdness to The Late Show, though as character who fits certain specific, unexpected, newly announced parameters for NASA’s Mission to Mars candidates.
In the pantheon of Stephens/Stevens/Steves/etc. throughout human existence, these two are probably the funniest of the whole lot.
Enjoy Colbert and Martin sing a song that will probably redefine your idea of what friends are.
Let us be clear here. Mike Birbiglia is an expert on cats and mice and not the idiom of “cat and mouse” denoting an ongoing chase.
His story on this week’s Colbert should prove that to you.
As guest of Stephen Colbert on The Late Show, venerable director Spike Jonze wanted to do more than just a simple bit on the show.
He, instead, opted for the make-a-whole-new-opening-for-the-show route.
The result, while only a one-time deal marked by Leap Day, really captures Colbert’s mixture of absurdity and heart that he goes for with abandon at the helm of The Late Show.
Watch Spike Jonze’s Late Show opening/A Short Film by Spike Jonze.
Making the late night rounds in promotion of his Hulu election special, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog got comfortable in an atypical position on the Late Show couch and went through a whole new round of roasting, complete with numerous prop cigars, and a mysteriously long tentacle of an arm.
As of this post, Adele Carpool Karaoke is almost at the 70 million view mark on YouTube, which, according to Deadline, is now the new pinnacle of viral late night clips.
For decades, the format of the late night talk show had pretty much stayed the same with all the trappings of monologues, well tailored suits, desk pieces, celebrity guests, bands.
Now, in the 2010s, the tried and true format of late night is no longer tried and true. Rather than hanging out and hearing the crazy stories of famous people, viewers of late night seem to want to see something crazy actually happen on the show and perhaps only that.
James Corden took over The Late Late Show from Craig Ferguson only last year, relatively unknown in America, and has now scored a viral video that has out performed all the silly games that Jimmy Fallon, the late night leader pretty much from his start at The Tonight Show, plays with A-listers pretty much every night that he tapes an episode.
When Corden inherited The Late Late Show, there was scarcely any online presence for The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson as brief out-of-context interview clips were the only thing that would CBS would bother uploading on to YouTube. There is a reason that Corden went from pretty much zero to 70 million hits in a matter of a months.
The Internet and, more specifically, YouTube and social media, have commodified late night TV into more of a spectacle than it ever was. Remote segments, games, trips outside the studio are all things that are resonating with the current landscape of late night. Adele singing and joking around with James Corden being the most watched late night YouTube clip perfectly illustrates this change.
Such things specifically include Conan O’Brien doing any of his segments out in the wild or going abroad, Jimmy Fallon’s Lip Sync Battle, the pranks that Jimmy Kimmel hatches or his ongoing faux feud with Matt Damon, the deep segments on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver that are uploaded early Monday morning. You’ll note that you’ve probably seen all of these an almost innumerable times on your various social media feeds, both in embedded video and in .gif form.
Sure, Letterman used to throw random things off of a roof and Leno used to find dumb people out on the street who didn’t know what we’d all assume is basic common knowledge for JayWalking. However, in 2016, you don’t have to watch all of The Late Show or The Tonight Show just to get to watch those segments or bits. At any time of the day, you can watch just those specific parts, over and over and over, and nothing else.
With this being the case, many of those aforementioned late night tropes like the opening monologue of topical jokes and desk pieces are slowly fading in relevance in favor of what makes for the most viral sounding headline.
When Conan does entire special episodes where he travels to remote locations, it more resembles something that Anthony Bourdain would do rather than The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson.
Last Week Tonight, @midnight, and now, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee all offer something also atypical of what late night has been for so very long by trading chats with celebrities for dozens more topical jokes that aren’t merely delivered while standing on stage without a video package to throw to. Their success is signs of the winds of change at 11PM onwards.
With all of that being said, the old guard late night talk show is, for now, still in tact. Stephen Colbert is, in a surprising turn from The Colbert Report, presenting a very high brow, well executed version of the traditional late night talk show. In fact, Colbert pulls off many feats as a late night talk show host, especially when it comes to who he books and how he interviews or interacts with who he books, that his competition cannot because they’re off focusing on all the things mentioned above. Whether he can ascend to the top of the mountain of late night like his predecessor David Letterman did and stay there has yet to be seen, but Colbert definitely has the brilliance to do so.
Oh yeah, because of Trevor Noah, Larry Wilmore, and Samantha Bee, there is finally more than one late night show right now not hosted by a white guy.
Though they’re inevitably some doubters and skeptics, all these new trends are probably for the best. When it’s easier to watch live TV and stream content on the Internet on the same device (and that’s probably pretty soon), know that late night is only going to get more shaken up.
On last night’s Late Show, Stephen Colbert put on a display of verbal aerobics just based off a reporter mistakenly calling Sen. Bernie Sanders, Bernie Sandwiches.
Colbert really makes this desk piece way more fun than you think it’s going to be.
Stephen Colbert unveiled a new segment for The Late Show last night where they supposedly dig into the ‘CBS vault’ to revisit classic CBS programming over the decades.
While one may think this could be a little reminiscent of Late Night with Conan O’Brien’s Walker Texas Ranger Lever, note that Colbert only seems to get inspired by old CBS shows and then does his own uber-clever take on it.
For this first time around, Stephen does just the twists of The Twilight Zone and it’s pretty spot on. Watch it here.
Got my Super Bowl squad ready. Hey Tina Fey, @MargotRobbie, Will Ferrell, @KeeganMKey, and @JordanPeele: Aim for the knees! #LSSC
Tina Fey, Will Ferrell, Keegan-Michael Key, Jordan Peele, and Margot Robbie should make for a pretty special episode of The Late Show after this year’s Super Bowl. We mean, that’s in addition to whatever ultra clever stuff Colbert has up his sleeve on his own.
Oh yeah, you should check out what Stephen is up to at The Late Show these days. It’s pretty great and showcases how many gears, both comedic and emphatic, Colbert can shift in and out of even though he’s not in character.
The wondrous Maria Bamford is thankfully many folks’ favorite comedian. All of said folks should know that they are in good company as Stephen Colbert revealed last night that Bamford is his “favorite comedian on planet earth”.
Between a set and chatting with Stephen, Maria showed why that label is well deserved with being the brilliant illuminating, truthful, and down right hysterical comedian that she is.
The main thing that you can be sure with T.J. Miller is at the helm of a show is that you’ll see something that will defy logic in a complex and layered way and also make you double over laughing at the same time.
His latest appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert is proof of that and we’re hoping the same sort of wave of delightful abandon will be ridden by Miller throughout The Critics Choice Awards this Sunday.
Avid watchers of late night know that celebrated actor Robert De Niro can make for one of the toughest interviews on a late night talk show. De Niro tends to be extremely reserved and short, if not monosyllabic, in his answers, proving a challenge for any and all late night hosts trying to make a conversation worthy of a national audience.
When Jimmy Fallon first took on Late Night, De Niro was one of Fallon’s first guests, which was supposed to be a spectacle of sorts with Jimmy’s feverish energy juxtaposed next to Robert’s unwavering stoicism. The result was not the spectacle that NBC was hoping for. Still, that was all before Fallon opted towards all the classic games, lip sync battles, etc. he now does on The Tonight Show that are so popular.
Stephen Colbert never shies away from a challenge and used every trick he could think of to take what started off as a dry chat at the start, but turned into a pretty fun ride on The Late Show that even got De Niro laughing.
This is just more proof, we think, that it’s a good thing that Colbert is at the helm at The Late Show.
When questioned about the legitimacy of doing his own stunts, legendary action movie star Bruce Willis did not take too nicely to Stephen Colbert’s tone on The Late Show.
As a result, Willis and Colbert put on what might be the most action packed late night bit we’ve seen in recent memory.
Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert meet again. This time, rather than as hosts of companion shows fictionally on opposite sides of the political spectrum, they meet as Late Show host and surprise guest.
Stewart is still on the march to get the Zadroga Act, the act that ensures needed medical care for 9/11 first responders, and is calling up big favors left and right. Already he has gone on The Daily Show and, just last night, he not only went on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, but he did so with his stunning Donald Trump impression.
There’s no way that Congress isn’t watching this like everyone else is, right?