Stephen Colbert doesn’t see himself as a paragon of progressivism.
In an interview with GQ covering his two decades as a television host and his sudden cancellation by CBS, Colbert said his “honest” reaction to the news of the day under President Donald Trump left people with an incorrect perception.
“People perceive me as this sort of lefty figure; I think I’m more conservative than people think. I just happen to be talking about a government in extremis,” he said. “What I’m giving you is my reaction video to the day. And my reaction video is like The Scream, in a way, but with jokes … It’s hard to have a balanced reaction to the idea of troops on streets of a city that actually is not undergoing an invasion.”
Colbert’s long-running talk show was cancelled just days after he joked about his network’s parent company settling a lawsuit with the president. Colbert declined to weigh in on whether the two were related, saying only that it was “reasonable” for outsiders to reach that sort of conclusion. He noted that his show was still the top-rated show in late-night at the time of his cancellation.
“The best reason to be number one is that the network does not f**k with you. That is the best reason to be number one. And we enjoyed nine unf**ked years,” he said.
Still, Colbert said he had no understanding of the world of network executives, saying that his show had a high overhead that cost-conscious higher-ups might not be able to move past.
“These late-night shows are kind of like symphony orchestras. They need a certain amount of personnel to do them. You can’t really do a show in the Ed Sullivan Theater … for the cost of a podcast,” he said. “It seems indispensable as part of some Americans’ experience or daily experience. But I can understand from a business point of view, they go, ‘Well, that is meaningless to me as someone who has to answer to a board of directors and investors.’”
Colbert’s last show is set for May. He told the magazine that he has no idea “how we’re going to land this plane” and hasn’t been able to assess his feelings about the end of the show “because the shows go on.”
“The image I have is a man walking toward me in the dusk and he’s got something in his hand, and I don’t know whether it’s a knife or an ice cream cone, but he’s asking me if I’d like a lick,” he said of the impending end.
Colbert did say he was ready to “get a little oxygen back into my brain” and that he felt a “sense of relief that [he] might not have to put the snorkel on and get into the sewer every day.” Still, he said that the end of his show will leave a void.
“I will miss every aspect of my job other than wearing makeup,” he said.
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