How "The Late Show" changed Stephen Colbert's style
"Face the Nation" moderator John Dickerson sat down with with Stephen Colbert, host of "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" to talk about how his interview style and tone have changed over the years. Read more here about Colbert's thoughts on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump from the first part of their interview. Below is a transcript of the second portion of the conversation.
JOHN DICKERSON: Have you -- have you learned how to interview differently now than when you did in the past?
STEPHEN COLBERT: Absolutely. Absolutely. I used to live by the Joe Scarborough rule which was, if someone on your show talks for more than 7 seconds, you've lost your control of your show.
JOHN DICKERSON: Constantly you'd interrupt?
STEPHEN COLBERT: Now I lay back and just see what they'll say.
JOHN DICKERSON: And what about the questions you ask?
STEPHEN COLBERT: It's based more on curiosity. I was always in attack mode before, you know. And people want me to attack people still. Like people were very upset. Like Liberals got so mad at me. They, somebody called me like a craven sell out for not attacking Donald Trump, like what? What do you want? There's no pleasing some people. Yeah.
JOHN DICKERSON: Looking back at this year. What I was struck by is after San Bernardino, you started one segment you said I'm trying to manage the tonal shift.
STEPHEN COLBERT: Yeah.
JOHN DICKERSON: That's what strikes me. Is that we've had -- politics is crazy but also we've had Charleston, the shooting in Charleston. We've had San Bernardino, the attacks in Paris. We're ending the year in kind of a fragile, walking on eggshells time.
STEPHEN COLBERT: And I have responsibility to do a comedy show. It's sort of a water cooler conversation. And that's why, it's not always political or even really news, it's just what people are talking about. And I feel like it's dishonest if I don't attempt to do that especially if there's an absolute tsunami or just something that eclipses any other thought.
JOHN DICKERSON: It seems to me there's a difference between a question and an answer you get, and a moment you have.
STEPHEN COLBERT: I love learning new things. We had, uh, MichellFe Dorrance on who is the Macarthur Genius Award Winner for tap dance. And she said would you like to learn something and I said absolutely! I've always wanted to learn to tap dance, never had a chance. And she just taught me like, what's it called? Half of a shim sham. I don't know if I'm still saying that right.
JOHN DICKERSON: Yeah, I like that with a little orange.
STEPHEN COLBERT: Exactly. It's beautiful. In the summertime amazing, so refreshing. I'll have a summer shim sham, incredible. So that was an amazing joy.
JOHN DICKERSON: And it was a moment. It wasn't you posed a great question.
STEPHEN COLBERT: I started off as an improviser in Chicago. And so to me I learn, and this is what I really enjoy, is I like discovery more than invention. Any discovery I can make is always going to be superior to an invention because discovery you don't know what you're going to find whereas invention you're just presenting to the audience something you've already made. Discovery is always superior to invention.
JOHN DICKERSON: Was the moment -
STEPHEN COLBERT: I hope you're carving this stuff down into stone by the way. I feel like I'm comedy Moses on the mountaintop right now. This is good stuff.
JOHN DICKERSON: This is high quality.
STEPHEN COLBERT: (laughs) You know what I charge to teach this at the learning annex.
JOHN DICKERSON: Your interview with Joe Biden. Was that a discovery in a sense?
STEPHEN COLBERT: After he left I thought, "Oh, that nice man just gave me my show" because I had to be myself in order to receive it. I had no other choice. And it was only my third show. And it was such an honor and I was completely moved by his willingness to share that with the audience.
Biden sound: A GUY IN THE BACK YELLS "MAJOR BEAU BIDEN, BRONZE STAR SIR, SERVED WITH HIM IN IRAQ. AND ALL OF A SUDDEN I LOST IT."
STEPHEN COLBERT: It was one of... I don't want to say the word happy because it's not a happy subject, but in some ways one of the most sublime moments I've ever had on stage, was to be there and have the ability, or to have the responsibility and the privilege to receive that from him.
JOHN DICKERSON: A pretty deep human connection.
STEPHEN COLBERT: Yeah.
JOHN DICKERSON: Out of nowhere. I mean, created in the moment.
STEPHEN COLBERT: Yeah. That's about it.
JOHN DICKERSON: What would you have asked the Pope?
STEPHEN COLBERT: I would've asked the Pope about joy. You know we call the show the joy machine and because unless you do it with joy it's just a machine you do 5 nights a week it will grind you up and spit you out and there have been nights. But I would've asked him about joy and where he finds his joy. Like how did he become Saint Peter? How did he get into the shoes of the fisherman without becoming dogmatically so rigid? That there's no joy left in him. I'm sure Benedict was a nice guy but I'm sure you didn't get a real head of joy off him. There's no contact high with Pope Benedict. But Francis just exudes a sense of spirit in the gospels in him as opposed to the abstract interpretation that gets activated into dogma which is really law.
JOHN DICKERSON: What is next year going to be like? Not for the show, but for the country.
STEPHEN COLBERT: It's hard for me to remember when we are not in an election year what an election year is like. It's the greatest story you could possibly talk about because everybody cares and nobody gets hurt. Nobody dies. It's not a tragedy. It's just super important. That's why I love the election year. You don't have to explain anything to your audience, you can just go (snaps) straight to the joke. Because they understand. You don't have to educate them in anyway. What's next year like? I don't know. If this year is any indication I hope it gets better. This is a sad year.
JOHN DICKERSON: Dark.
STEPHEN COLBERT: Yeah. Really a dark year. Yeah.
JOHN DICKERSON: We need somewhere to go for joy.
STEPHEN COLBERT: Star Wars (chuckles)
JOHN DICKERSON: What are your feelings about that?
STEPHEN COLBERT: I am thrilled. I love, I think there is something so hopeful about the reawakening the force. Because the force is the idea that, it binds us together, it doesn't divide us. You know who the good guys are and who bad guys are. And isn't that nice in a world where it is sometimes hard to tell? I mean, in some ways it feels like a great time for a movie like that, the same way after 9/11 it was a very good time to have Lord of the Rings movies. Because there was clarity in our culture. There was a cultural artifact that had moral clarity.
I do comedy for a living you though. I just want to be clear. I do comedy for a living. This is like - the most serious interview I have done in years.
JOHN DICKERSON: I know I'm a downer.
STEPHEN COLBERT: You're not a downer. You're not a downer.
JOHN DICKERSON: You know the other thing about comedy though is we need to acknowledge this horrible thing that happened but we also need the catharsis of that comedy to get us back on the road to controlling what seems like a time of total chaos.
STEPHEN COLBERT: You can't laugh and be afraid at the same time. It's physiologically impossible to laugh and be afraid at the same time. So I'm very grateful for my job. Because we think about things like the things we are talking about but at the end of the day we have to find some way to laugh about it that is not disrespectful of people's experience of it. And that's an odd little balance to walk but hopefully we do it sometimes.