Stephen Colbert Says He Learned ‘Things About My Father I Didn’t Know’ While Interviewing Union Organizer Who Worked with Him
Stephen Colbert Says He Learned ‘Things About My Father I Didn’t Know’ While Interviewing Union Organizer Who Worked with Him
Stephen Colbert got personal in a video interview for The Hollywood Reporter, published May 6. In it, Colbert answered questions from some of his fellow late-night hosts, as his tenure on The Late Show is ending this May. The 61-year-old comedian hosted The Colbert Report for Comedy Central from 2005 to 2014 before jumping to The Late Show, which he took over in September 2015.
Late Night host Seth Meyers asked Colbert, “What’s an answer a guest gave that will stay with you the longest?”
The first thing he thought of was an answer from Keanu Reeves. When Reeves, 61, appeared on The Late Show in 2019, Colbert said, “Out of nowhere, I don’t know why, I just asked him, ‘What do you think happens when we die?’ And he paused in that way only Keanu can, and he said something beautiful, actually.”
Reeves answered, “I know that the ones who love us will miss us.” Colbert said the video “blew up” and became one of the most popular clips from the show on YouTube. It inspired the staff to build the “Colbert Questionnaire,” a series of 15 questions that range from the mundane (like what’s the best sandwich) to the profound.
Stephen Colbert on ‘The Colbert Report’.Joel Jefferies/COMEDY CENTRAL
Then Colbert remembered another person he interviewed, Ambassador Andrew Young, during his time on The Colbert Report. He said, “In 1969, my father had just begun running a hospital in South Carolina, the Medical University of South Carolina. And there was a strike.” He remembered that civil rights activist Ralph Abernathy had come down to Charleston with Coretta Scott King and “this young guy who was working with him named Andrew Young.”
He remembered, “And the president of the university was from South Africa and just would not talk to any of the Black strikers.” Colbert’s father, James Colbert Jr., had previously worked with unions in New York. “And my father said, ‘I can talk to the unions,’ ” he said. “And so Andrew Young and my father settled that strike.” James died in a 1974 plane crash, along with two of Colbert’s 11 siblings, Paul and Peter.
Years later, Colbert was figuring out how to keep The Colbert Report going during the Writers Guild of America strike in 2007 and 2009. “I didn’t know what to do,” he said.
His brother Ed suggested calling Young, 94. In the intervening years, he had served as a congressman from Georgia, the Ambassador to the United Nations in the Carter administration and mayor of Atlanta.
Stephen Colbert on ‘The Late Show’.Scott Kowalchyk/CBS
“So, I had Andrew Young on, and he said to me things about my father I didn’t know cause he died when I was 10,” Colbert remembered. “And he said, ‘Your father understood to always keep talking, cause if you’re talking, there’s hope.’ I’ll never forget that.”
When The Colbert Report ended in 2014, Young returned as one of 70 guests. “And he walked in with his cane and his booming voice, and he walked in and says, ‘I am here representing Steven’s father.’ Isn’t that lovely?” Colbert said. “I said, ‘Somebody should.’ ”
In 2014, Young told Atlanta Magazine why he showed up for the 2014 finale. “Being there last night was part of what I call the Colbert phenomenon,” he said. “He helped young people deal with the complexities and anxieties and threats of the world. He was poking fun of the most threatening issues of our time.”
He said of Colbert’s father, “We hit it off immediately. Like his son, he was brilliant. He had worked at New York Presbyterian Hospital, which had a union, and he knew all the people in the union. We just had to translate liberal New York union speak for folks in moderate conservative Charleston. It worked.”
