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Stephen Tyrone Colbert () (born May 13, 1964) is a four-time Emmy Award-winning American comedian, actor, and writer, known for his satirical style and deadpan comedic delivery. Colbert originally studied to be a dramatic actor, but became interested in improvisational theater when he met famed Second City director Del Close while attending Northwestern University. He first performed professionally as an understudy for Steve Carrell at Second City Chicago; among his troupe mates were comedians Paul Dinello and Amy Sedaris, with whom he developed the critically acclaimed sketch comedy series Exit 57. Colbert also wrote and performed on the short-lived Dana Carvey Show before collaborating with Sedaris and Dinello again on the cult TV series Strangers with Candy. He gained considerable attention for his role on the latter as closeted gay history teacher Chuck Noblet; it was his work as a correspondent on Comedy Central's news-parody series The Daily Show, however, that first introduced him to a wide audience.
In 2005, he left The Daily Show to host its newly-created spinoff series, The Colbert Report. Following from The Daily Show's news-parody conceit, The Colbert Report styles itself as a parody of such personality-driven political opinion shows as Bill O'Reilly's The O'Reilly Factor. Since its debut the series has been successful, earning Colbert three Emmy nominations and an invitation to perform as featured entertainer at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner in its first year, in addition to establishing itself as one of Comedy Central's highest rated series. Colbert was named one of Time Magazine's 100 most influential people in 2006.•
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Personal life
Stephen Colbert was born in Sumter, South Carolina and grew up on James Island, the youngest of eleven children in a Catholic family.
On September 11, 1974, when Colbert was ten years old, his father and two brothers, Peter and Paul, were killed in the crash of Eastern Air Lines Flight 212 while it was attempting to land in Charlotte, North Carolina. They were reportedly en route to enroll the two boys at Canterbury High School in New Milford, Connecticut.[ Colbert would later describe himself during this time as detached, lacking a sense of the importance of the things other children around him concerned themselves with.][ He developed a love of science fiction and fantasy novels, especially the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, of which he remains an avid fan. During his adolescence, he also developed an intense interest in fantasy role-playing games, especially Dungeons & Dragons,][ a pastime which he would later characterize as an early experience in acting and improvisation.]
Colbert attended Charleston's Episcopal Porter-Gaud School, where he participated in several school plays and contributed to the school newspaper, but, by his own assessment, was not highly motivated academically.[ When he was younger, he had hoped to study marine biology, but surgery intended to repair a severely perforated eardrum caused him inner ear damage sufficient to rule out a career that would involve scuba diving, as well as leaving him deaf in his right ear.][; he found the curriculum rigorous, but was more focused than he had been in high school and was able to apply himself to his studies. Despite the lack of a significant theater community at Hampden-Sydney, Colbert's interest in the acting escalated during this time. After two years, he transferred to Northwestern University's school of speech to study performance, emboldened by the realization that he loved performing even when no one was coming to shows.][ While there, he became involved in the improvisation troupe ImprovOlympic. After college, he went to work at The Second City and participated in improv classes there.]
Although by his own account he was not particularly political before joining the cast of The Daily Show, Colbert is a self-described Democrat.[ and a Sunday school teacher.][Interview with Stephen Colbert on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, June 14, 2006.]
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Early career
While at Northwestern, Colbert studied with the intent of becoming a dramatic actor; mostly he performed in experimental plays and was disinterested in comedy. He began performing improv at the Annoyance Theater in Chicago as a part of Del Close's ImprovOlympic at a time when the project was focused on competitive, long form improvisation, rather than improvisational comedy. "I wasn't gonna do Second City," Colbert later recalled, "because those Annoyance people looked down on Second City because they thought it wasn't pure improv — there was a slightly snobby, mystical quality to the Annoyance people."
After Colbert graduated, however, he was in need of a job, and a friend who was employed at Second City's box office offered him work answering phones and selling souvenirs.[ Colbert accepted, and discovered that Second City employees were entitled to take classes at their training center for free.][ Despite his earlier aversion to the comedy group, he signed up, and enjoyed the experience greatly; shortly thereafter, he was hired to perform with Second City's touring company, initially as an understudy for Steve Carell. It was there he met Amy Sedaris and Paul Dinello, with whom he would often collaborate later in his career. By their retelling, the three comedians did not get along at first — Dinello thought Colbert was uptight, pretentious and cold, while Colbert thought of Dinello as "an illiterate thug"]
When Sedaris and Dinello were offered the opportunity to create a television series for HBO Downtown Productions, Colbert quit Second City and relocated to New York in order to work with them on Exit 57,[ a sketch comedy show which aired on Comedy Central from 1995 to 1996. Despite only lasting for 12 episodes, the show was critically successful, garnering five CableACE Award nominations in 1995, in categories including best writing, performance, and comedy series.]
Following the cancellation of Exit 57, Colbert worked briefly as a cast member and writer on The Dana Carvey Show, as well as a writer on Saturday Night Live, before taking a job filming humorous correspondent segments for Good Morning America.[ Only two of the segments he proposed were ever produced, and only one aired, but the job led his agent to refer him to the Daily Show's then-producer, Madeline Smithberg, who hired Colbert on a trial basis in 1997.]
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Strangers With Candy
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During the same time frame, Colbert worked again with Sedaris and Dinello to develop a new comedy series for Comedy Central, Strangers with Candy. Comedy Central picked up the series in 1998 after Colbert had already begun working on The Daily Show. As a result Colbert accepted a reduced role, filming only 20 Daily Show segments a year while he worked on the new series.
Strangers with Candy was conceived of as a parody of after-school specials, following the life of Jerri Blank, a 46-year-old drop-out who returns to finish high school after 30 years of life on the street. Most noted by critics for its use of offensive humor, it concluded each episode by delivering to the audience a skewed, politically incorrect moral lesson.
Thirty episodes of the series were made, which aired on Comedy Central in 1999 and 2000. Though its ratings were not remarkable during its initial run, it has been characterized as a cult show with a small but dedicated audience.
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The Daily Show
Stephen Colbert joined the cast of Comedy Central's parody-news series The Daily Show in 1997, when the show was in its second season. Originally one of four "correspondents" who filmed segments from remote locations in the style of network news field reporters, Colbert was referred to as "the new guy" on-air for his first two years on the show, during which time Craig Kilborn served as host. When Kilborn left the show prior to the 1999 season, Jon Stewart took over hosting duties, also serving as a writer and co-executive. From this point, the series gradually began to take on a more political tone, and began to increase in popularity, particularly in the latter part of 2000 during the U.S. presidential election season. The role of the show's correspondents was expanded to include more in-studio segments, as well as international reports which were almost always faked with the aid of a green screen.[ ]
Unlike Stewart, who essentially hosts The Daily Show as himself,[ The character was frequently pitted against knowledgeable interview subjects, or against Stewart in scripted exchanges, with the resultant dialogue demonstrating the Colbert-character's lack of knowledge of whatever he's talking about;][ he also made generous use of humorous fallacies of logic in explaining his point of view on any topic. Other Daily Show correspondents have adopted a similar style, and the convention of having more character-driven correspondent segments, with Stewart serving as a kind of straight-man foil, is now generally accepted as a part of the show's format.]
Some recurring segments Colbert has appeared in for The Daily Show have included "Even Stevphen" with Steve Carell, and "This Week in God," a weekly report on topics in the news pertaining to religion, presented with the help of "The God Machine". Colbert also filed reports from the floor of the Democratic National Convention and the Republican National Convention as a part of The Daily Show's award-winning coverage of the 2000 and 2004 U.S. Presidential elections; many from the latter were included as part of their Indecision 2004 DVD release. In a few episodes of The Daily Show, Colbert filled in as anchor in the absence of Jon Stewart, including the full week of March 3, 2002 when Stewart was scheduled to host Saturday Night Live. On one occasion, guest interviewee Al Sharpton failed to arrive for the taping, so Colbert filled in as Sharpton.
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The Colbert Report
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Since October 17, 2005, Colbert has hosted his own television show, The Colbert Report, a Daily Show spin-off which parodies the conventions of television news broadcasting,• Colbert hosts the show in-character as a blustery right-wing pundit, generally considered to be an extension of his character on The Daily Show. Conceived of by co-creators Stewart, Colbert and Ben Karlin in part as an opportunity to explore "the character-driven news", the series focuses less on the day-to-day news cycle than the Daily Show, instead frequently concentrating on the foibles of the host-character himself.
The concept for The Report was first seen in a series of Daily Show segments which advertised the as-of-yet-fictional series as a joke. It was later developed by Stewart's Busboy Productions and pitched to Comedy Central, which green lighted the program; Comedy Central had already been searching for a way to extend the successful Daily Show franchise beyond a half hour.• The series opened to strong ratings, averaging 1.2 million viewers nightly during its first week on the air. Comedy Central signed a long-term contract for The Colbert Report within its first month on the air, when it immediately established itself among the network's highest-rated shows.••
In January 2006, the American Dialect Society named truthiness, which Colbert featured on the premiere episode of the Colbert Report, as its 2005 Word of the Year . Colbert devoted time on five successive episodes to bemoaning the failure of the Associated Press to mention his role in popularizing the word truthiness in its news coverage of the Word of the Year.•
Time Magazine named Stephen Colbert as one of the 100 most influential people in 2006.• In May 2006, the New Yorker magazine listed Colbert (along with John Stewart of the Daily Show) as one of its top dozen influential persons in media.•
Colbert was nominated for three Emmys for The Colbert Report in 2006, including the "Best Performance in a Variety, Musical Program or Special" award, which he lost to Barry Manilow -- Manilow and Colbert would go on to sign and notarize a revolving biannual "custody agreement" for the Emmy on the Colbert Report episode aired on 30 October 2006. Colbert's only Emmy in 2006 came as a writer for The Daily Show. He was named "2nd Sexiest TV News Anchor" in September 2006 by Maxim Online, next to Melissa Theuriau of France. He was the only man on the list.•
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2006 White House Correspondents Association Dinner
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On Saturday, April 29, 2006, Stephen Colbert was the featured entertainer for the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner, delivering a 24-minute speech and video presentation which was broadcast on C-SPAN and MSNBC. In his faux-politically conservative character from The Colbert Report, Colbert satirized the George W. Bush administration and the White House press corps with such lines as:
The performance received a lukewarm response from the audience, and major media outlets paid little attention to it initially. Some, such as Washington Post columnist Dan Froomkin and investigative journalist Robert Parry, claimed that this was because Colbert was critical of the Bush administration in the routine.•• Richard Cohen, also writing for the Washington Post, responded by claiming that Colbert didn't get media attention because the routine wasn't funny. However, the video of Colbert's speech became popular on the internet• and ratings for The Colbert Report rose 37% in the week following the speech.• The press began to have mixed reactions to Colbert's performance several days after the event. The video of the speech has remained popular on the internet and eventually became the
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Other work
Stephen Colbert is co-author of the satirical text-and-picture novel Wigfield: The Can Do Town That Just May Not, which was published in 2003 by Hyperion Books. The novel was a collaboration between Colbert, Amy Sedaris and Paul Dinello, and tells the story of a small town threatened by the impending destruction of a massive dam. The narrative is presented as a series of fictional interviews with the town's residents, accompanied by photos. The three authors toured performing an adaptation of Wigfield on stage the same year the book was released.• He also portrayed the letter Z in Sesame Street: All-Star Alphabet, a 2005 video release.
Colbert is currently working on a new book which will be published in September 2007 by Warner Books; its title has not yet been announced. Warner Books was also the publisher of America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction, written by the Daily Show staff. The new book is expected to contain similar political satire, but will be written primarily by Colbert rather than as a collaboration with his Colbert Report writing staff.•
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See also
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