Last night’s Late Show did things a little differently. The show aired a bunch of prerecorded interviews in which, instead of Stephen Colbert interviewing guests, the guests sat behind the desk and interviewed Colbert. One such guest was Colbert’s former boss Jon Stewart, and the two longtime pals had a lengthy chat together. At one point, Colbert makes a Colbert Report reference when telling Stewart about the time a fan approached him while he was out to dinner with his wife and daughter: “This guy comes up and goes, ‘I really love the show!’ I said, ‘Thanks very much!’ And he goes, ‘I liked the old show more, but still!’†“That’s uncomfortable,†Stewart responds. “Yeah. Do you get that?†Colbert asks him. “Oh, you don’t have new work yet!â€
The two spend a little time at the end of the above clip talking about the current POTUS — or as he is most commonly referred to by Jon Stewart, “Fuckface Von Clownstick†— which leads Colbert to ask Stewart if he misses having a show to address what’s happening politically right now. “You and I both famously know we were turd miners. We toiled in the turd mines … We’ve both lost many people close to us to turd lung. It’s been a terrible thing. So working at The Daily Show, I felt as though I was toiling in the turd mines. And then I finally quit, and then a giant turd asteroid heads toward the planet. Now, in that instance, if someone said, ‘You were a turd miner — this is the largest turd deposit ever seen! Don’t you wish you were in there?’ And you’re just like, ‘I’m out of the turd business! I’m out!’â€
In the next clip, Stewart asks Colbert how he got used to hosting a late-night show as himself after so many years hosting it as a character. Colbert credits this to his early interview with Vice-President Joe Biden (“I said, ‘That nice old man just gave me my show!’â€) as well as figuring out his monologue style: “The old show, we were trying to do something that hadn’t been done before, and here, what I’ve discovered is, I can have so much fun doing an old form, but with our flavor.â€
In the final clip, the two talk about Colbert’s favorite characters in the Old Testament — and speaking of the Bible, they also chat about David Letterman, who Stewart calls “the pope of comedy.†Near the end of the chat, Stewart tells Colbert, “It has been an honor and a pleasure to interview you, but more importantly, it is an honor and a pleasure to watch this program every night that I do from my perch underneath your shoes.â€