Thursday will be Stephen Colbert’s last appearance behind his desk at the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York City.
The 62-year-old comedian, Catholic and South Carolinian has poked fun at just about everything under the sun, but Seattle has provided Colbert with material on several occasions.
Remember that blistering heat wave in 2021 when temperatures hit 108 degrees? Well, it was so hot that it killed Kelsey Grammer’s radio psychiatrist Frasier Crane, of the hit Seattle-set show “Frasier,” on a “The Late Show” sketch that June.
A sun blazed through the Seattle skyline on the iconic “Frasier” title card to reveal Frasier and Peri Gilpin’s Roz Doyle slumped over in the radio booth while someone calls in screaming “I’m melting! I’m melting!” like the Wicked Witch of the West.
“It’s so bad in Seattle, everyone is down to their flannel speedos,” Colbert joked in his monologue. The Seattle Times cannot confirm that didn’t happen anywhere in the city.
Colbert also took a swipe at the Space Needle on its 60th birthday in 2022 when a contest was being held to select five people to paint the pointy landmark’s roof “Galaxy Gold,” its original color upon debuting at the Seattle World’s Fair in 1962.
“The winners will get to help repaint the Space Needle roof,” Colbert said. “Or, you could not enter, and win an even more exciting prize: not painting the Space Needle’s roof.”
Let’s assume that was a dig at the dangerousness of the task, not at the … much loved … orange-ish color. Colbert has acknowledged his fear of heights, after all.
Space Needle leadership said Colbert didn’t win the contest (because he didn’t enter), but told the comedian there’s a harness with his name on it if he happens to visit.
Speaking of landmarks, Colbert recreated his “lifelong dream” of salmon-tossing a la Pike Place Market by throwing a salmon back and forth in the hallways of Washington, D.C.’s Capitol Hill with then-Rep. Jim McDermott of Washington Congressional District 7, which includes Seattle.
Colbert, who at the time was playing a smug conservative commentator on Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report,” not only whacked the fish with a baseball bat but also asked McDermott if “you like big butts.”
Unlike the salmon, McDermott didn’t catch the Sir Mix-A-Lot reference, telling Colbert, “I’m not quite sure what you’re driving at with that question.”
Seattle headlines also made their way to Colbert’s desk in 2023 when Swifties stomped out the equivalent of a 2.3 magnitude earthquake during Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour performance at Lumen Field. Colbert, a self-proclaimed Swiftie, marveled that her fans “registered on the Richter scale.”
A few Seattle signature businesses and billionaires also caught some of Colbert’s jokes.
When Starbucks launched an app allowing customers to order ahead in 2016, The Wall Street Journal reported that people missed baristas misspelling their names. Colbert joked, “Starbucks’ greatest strength has always been being bad at names. This is the company that named their shortest drink ‘tall.’ ”
It doesn’t seem like former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz was being quirky when he called Seattle’s business climate “hostile” and “socialist rhetoric,” however.
Oh, how a Starbucks barista might’ve misspelled those words.
Colbert also described Jeff Bezos “like the underbelly of a hairless cat, like Lex Luthor but he knows more about you and he’s less trustworthy,” to then-Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren during a guessing game in 2020. He did, however, encourage college graduates to “get Amazon Prime” during a commencement speech sketch four years earlier.
The final episode of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” will air on CBS and stream on Paramount+ at 11:35 p.m.
CBS canceled Colbert’s show, citing economic reasons, despite “The Late Show” leading late-night TV in ratings.
The decision came after parent company Paramount paid $16 million to settle President Donald Trump’s lawsuit over a “60 Minutes” interview while the company waited for the administration to approve a pending sale to Skydance Media. Colbert called it “a big fat bribe.”
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