As of 2024, “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” is the most-watched late-night show in America.
But he hasn’t always had a dolce vita.
Colbert had tolearn how to cope with grieffrom a young age.
Colbert was always close to his parents and 11 siblings in their South Carolina home.
Singing and dancing was (sic) encouraged except at the dinner table."
Their death shaped his life.
“And then you kind of reform yourself in this quiet grieving world that was created in the house.
[…] It became a very quiet house, very dark.”
How tragedy shaped Stephen Colbert’s comedy
After their deaths, Stephen Colbert described himself as distant.
“Ordinary concerns of childhood suddenly disappeared,” he told Anderson Cooper.
“I had certainly a different point of view than the children around me.”
He then mentioned that science fiction and fantasy novels, especially J.R.R.
Tolkien’s works, helped him escape to the point where he read one book a day.
He explained, “What do you get from loss?
“Suddenly, this important thing disappears.
[…] The things that supposedly had status, don’t have status anymore.
Colbert now lives in Montclair, New Jersey, with his wife Evelyn McGee-Colbert, and theirthree children.
His deepest joy is “to be with [his] wife and children.”
