Amazing interview with Stephen Colbert

Stephen Colbert | The A.V. Club: "

AVC: That sort of gets to the essence of the character you play on The Colbert Report. He's appealing because he tells people how to think.


SC: 'Don't worry your pretty little head. Open wide, baby bird, because poppa's got a fat nightcrawler of truth for you.'



AVC: What about Bill O'Reilly and similar figures makes them so ripe for satire?


SC: Status is always ripe for satire, status is always good for comedy. And they have the highest possible status—and that's what we've tried to amplify with everything on the show. Everything on the show has my name on it, every bit of the set. One of the things I said to the set designer—who has done everything, I mean even Meet The Press, he does that level of news design—was 'One of your inspirations should be [DaVinci's painting] The Last Supper.' All the architecture of that room points at Jesus' head, the entire room is a halo, and he doesn't have a halo.' And I said, 'On the set, I'd like the lines of the set to converge on my head.' And so if you look at the design, it all does, it all points at my head. And even radial lines on the floor, and on my podium, and watermarks in the images behind me, and all the vertices, are right behind my head. So there's a sort of sun-god burst quality about the set around me. And I love that. That's status."