It’s a rarity, especially on TV, to see two hosts as such close friends. But that’s what they are – Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Colbert has a rare, completely serious interview with Playboy about comedy, extending his contract with Comedy Central through 2014, and his friendship with Jon Stewart.
When he talks about his friendship, he says, “I’m an ardent admirer of his. I would say the thing that has kept me from being as good a friend to Jon as I would like is just that I am such a fan. I am gobsmacked by his abilities. But that being said, we go out to dinner, and we sometimes pick up the phone just to say, ‘How are you?’ Or, ‘Do you mind if I tell you how I am? I had a s—-y week.’”
He also adds that comedy is ‘ultimately an athletic endeavor’, saying, “You have to be able to just hit the backhand. You can’t think about all the pieces of it. You can’t think about your swing. You just have to do it. Reading someone else’s deconstruction of what I do, all it does is put me in my head. On nights when the show goes particularly well, I am not aware of its fluidity. A lot of nights I’m just worried that I’m not going to be as good as the script in front of me.”
It was also recently announced that he would be extending his contract with Comedy Central until 2014, and says, “I try not to think about it in terms of years. You can’t do 161 shows. It can’t be done. All I can do is today and tomorrow and have some idea of what we’re doing next week. That’s all I can worry about. I have a script for today, I have probably half a script for tomorrow, and that’s as far down the road as I ever look. I know the mechanism of my show, and I know how it works. There’s a joy in that.”
