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Stephen Colbert can’t finish Late Show Without responding to each other very Important questions.
On Wednesday, during the second-to-last episode of the CBS late-night talk show, the host finally revealed his answers to his popular “Colbert Questionert.”
The recurring character segment typically sees Colbert asking his guests 15 questions to help the audience get to know them more fully. However, Colbert enlisted the help of some of his famous friends on Wednesday to help field questions because he was in the hot seat this time around.
former CBS Evening News anchor John Dickerson also stepped in to moderate the segment, introducing each of the famous guests. Billy Crystal, “Weird Al” Yankovic, Josh Brolin, Martha Stewart, Mark Hamill, Jim Gaffigan, Jeff Daniels, Tiffany Haddish, Evie McGee Colbert, Amy Sedaris, Ben Stiller, Aubrey Plaza, James Taylor, Robert De Niro and Dickerson sat behind Colbert’s desk, diving “into the depths of Stephen Colbert,” Dickerson said.
The last episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert Airing Thursday, May 21.
See all of Colbert’s answers to “Colbert Questions” below.
What is the best sandwich?
“This is one of the toughest questions and we start with this question. Billy, what time of year are we talking about here? Because there’s a summer sandwich and then there’s a sandwich every other part of the year, and if we’re talking about summer, it’s a tomato sandwich on very thin white bread. With a lot of salt and pepper, and maybe a little mayonnaise, and you eat it over the sink. It’s called a sink sandwich because it falls apart in your hand. … The rest of the year, wherever you are, the rest of the year is hot pastrami on rye with a little mustard, and if the person standing Behind the counter is ready, there’s a little coleslaw there, and if it’s not kosher, I’ll take a little Munster there, but the hot pastrami sandwich from Katz’s Deli, that’s the best sandwich.
What was the first concert you attended?
“The first concert I attended was at the Gillard Auditorium in Charleston, South Carolina. I went with my mom. It was 1977. It was Chuck Mangione, ‘The Sanchez Kids.’
What is the scariest animal?
“So the scariest animal to me is the trapdoor spider. Here’s the scariest part about that, Josh Brolin. A scientist named a trapdoor spider after me.”
Apple or orange?
“Well, you can’t put peanut butter on an orange. So, I’ll risk pissing off the Seraphim and say I’ll bite into the apple.”
Have you ever asked someone for an autograph?
“Oh yeah! I did a little bit with Steve Martin years ago, and it’s the first time I’ve ever had him on the old show. Big fan of Steve Martin. Like in my comedy Mount Rushmore, as part of that, we were talking about a panel and we added to the panel a little cutout of Steve’s head. That was from his head. And when the show was over, I said, ‘Hey, would you mind autographing this?'” He signed the top of his face, and I framed it on a nice little background and hung it in my office. I hung it, or whoever hung it, hung it where there was a clock in my office, so we’re always on deadline here and that clock is running super fast, so I would just look up and see what time it is and there would be the picture so I like to say in my office: ‘It’s always Steve Martin.’
In your opinion, what happens when we die?
“What comes to my mind when I ask this question, is more like a feeling, and the feeling is that when we die, I think there is some continuity of sorts. But it’s like the dispersal of the self into another greater being. And I don’t have any other feelings beyond that.”
Favorite action movie?
“This is a tough movie. My favorite movie is horror, that’s the thing, so I don’t think it’s action. I think it’s more horror than action. It’s more horror than action. It’s a horror movie.” Raiders of Lost Aryour.”
Window or corridor?
“I have a little squirrel’s bladder, so I love the aisle because I don’t want to say to the person next to me, ‘I need to get up,’ so I’m in the aisle at all times.”
Favorite scent?
“My favorite scent is when we go out somewhere and you go upstairs to get ready first. Then I follow you and when I like the top of the stairs, I know you’ve already gotten out of the shower because I can smell it like rose lotion. And I know you’re in there wearing very little.”
Least favorite scent?
“I was young, maybe 10 or 11, and I had a neighbor down the street, the Millers. And Mrs. Miller was really nice. We used to talk all the time, even when the kids weren’t around. She was a really lovely woman, and I remember one day she was cleaning under the sink. I was just sitting on a high stool in the kitchen. And you know how people keep grease jars, like they collect grease, and it was either cracked or broken. The lid of the jar came off and it poured out.” The grease is in a bag of sugar and the bag of sugar has turned rancid, so either the grease has turned the sugar into rancid or the sugar has turned the grease into rancid, one of the two but she said to me, “Do you want to smell the worst of it?” “By ourselves, which you can clearly think about, but this was much worse than anything else I’ve ever smelled.”
What is your oldest memory?
“I was born in Washington, D.C., and I have a memory of my mother standing on a short little staircase with her hair wrapped up in a little scarf there, either painting the bedroom brown. And I asked her, ‘How old would that be?’ And she said, ‘You were probably three when I did that,’ but that makes sense because I remember not being able to say anything to her. Like I remember being frustrated that she couldn’t quite understand what I was trying to say to her, but I remember what I was trying to say to her, and what I was trying to say to her was my earliest memory. I’m trying to tell her about the dream I had the night before, and I remember I had a dream about Snowflake, the white gorilla that was in the National Zoo, and I had a dream about a white King Kong…so I have a beginning in my memory that is my first memory is not being able to tell my mother.
Cats or dogs?
“Dogs.”
You have one song to listen to for the rest of your life: what is it?
“The song that comes to mind when I ask people this question, at the risk of sounding pretentious, which is too late for me now, is Glenn Gould’s Execution of [Felix] Mendelssohn’s “Song Without Words” in E Major Op. 19 No. 1.”
What number am I thinking of?
“There’s a hint about what the answer is, because when someone answers the question and gives the wrong answer, I always say ‘no.’ And when I give the right answer, which has happened at least twice — Meryl Streep and Ethan Hawke have guessed right — and Ethan Hawke immediately says, ‘I know what it is.’ It’s three. That’s the number I was thinking about.”
How would you describe the rest of your life in 5 words?
“My family, my friends, the fun.”
