Stephen Colbert couldn’t end The Late Show without answering some 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 iconic “Colbert Questionert.”
The recurring personality segment typically saw Colbert ask his guests 15 questions to help the audience fully know them. However, Colbert enlisted some of his famous friends on Wednesday to help ask the questions as he was in the hot seat this time.
Former CBS Evening News anchor John Dickerson also stepped in to administer 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 then each took a turn sitting behind Colbert’s desk, diving “into the depths of Stephen Colbert,” Dickerson said.
The final episode of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert airs Thursday, May 21.
See all of Colbert’s answers to the “Colbert Questionert” below.
What is the best sandwich?
“This is one of the toughest questions and we start with this one. Billy, what time of year are we talking here? Because there’s a summer sandwich and then there’s every other part of the year sandwich, and if we’re talking summer, it’s a tomato sandwich on very thin white bread. With a lot of salt and pepper, maybe a little mayo, and you eat it over the sink. It’s called a sink sandwich because it just 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 bit of mustard. And if the guy behind the counter is willing, a little coleslaw on there, and if it’s not kosher deli, I’ll take a little Munster on there. But Katz’s Deli’s hot pastrami sandwich, that’s the best sandwich.”
What is the first concert you attended?
“The first concert I attended was at Gaillard Auditorium in Charleston, South Carolina. I went with my mom. It was in 1977. It was. Chuck Mangione, the “Children of Sanchez.”
What is the scariest animal?
“So the scariest animal to me is a trapdoor spider. And here’s the part that’s even scarier than that, Josh Brolin. A scientist named a trapdoor spider after me.”
Apples or oranges?
“Well, you can’t put peanut butter on an orange. So, I’m gonna risk the wrath of the Seraphim and say I will bite the apple.”
Have you ever asked someone for their autograph?
“Oh yeah! I did a bit with Steve Martin years ago, the first time I ever had him on the old show. A huge fan of Steve Martin. Like he’s in my Mount Rushmore of comedy, and as part of it, we were talking about a painting and we added to the painting a little cutout of Steve’s head. It was from his headshot. And when the show was over, I said, ‘Hey, would you mind signing this?’ So he just signed across the top of his face, and I had it framed on a lovely little background and hung in my office. But I hung it, or whoever hung it, hung it where there used to be a clock in my office, and so we’re always on deadline here and that clock is just spinning around super fast, so I would just look up to see what time it was and there would be the picture. So I like to say in my office, ‘It’s always Steve Martin o’clock.’”
What do you think happens when we die?
“What comes to mind when I ask this question, it’s more like a feeling, and the feeling is that when we die, I think there is some continuance of some kind. But it’s like a dispersion of the self into some other greater being. And I don’t have any other feelings beyond that.”
Favorite action movie?
“This is a toughie. My favorite movie is horror, that’s the thing, so I don’t think that’s action. I think it’s more horror than action. Raiders of the Lost Ark.”
Window or aisle?
“I have the bladder of just a baby chipmunk, so I like the aisle because I don’t wanna have to say to the person next to me, ‘I need to get up,’ so I’m on the aisle at all times.”
Favorite smell?
“My favorite smell is when we are going out someplace and you go upstairs to get ready first. And then I come up to follow you and when I get to like the top of the stairs, I know that you’ve already gotten out of the shower because I can smell that like rose lotion. And I know that you’re in there wearing very little.”
Least favorite smell?
“I was young, I was maybe 10 or 11, and I had a next-door neighbor across the street, the Millers. And Mrs. Miller was really lovely. We used to talk all the time, even when the kids weren’t around. She was really a lovely woman, and I remember one day she was cleaning out underneath the sink. I was just sitting on the barstool in the kitchen. And you know how people keep jars of grease, like they collect their grease, and it had either broken or the jar lid had come loose and the grease had poured into a bag of sugar. And the bag of sugar had turned rancid, so it’s either the grease had turned the sugar rancid or the sugar had turned the grease rancid, one of the two. But she said to me, ‘Do you wanna smell just the worst thing?’ … And I said, ‘Sure,’ and I smelled it, and I can’t possibly describe what it’s like. But I remember even as a boy going, ‘Wow, I know there’s some bad smells, like we humans make our own bad-smelling things, which you can obviously think of, but this was so much worse than anything else I’d ever smelled.”
What is your earliest memory?
“I was born in Washington, D.C., and I have a memory of my mom up on a little, short ladder with her hair in a little scarf back there, either painting the bedroom brown. And I asked her, ‘How old would that be?’ And she said, ‘You were maybe three when I did that,’ but that kind of makes sense because I remember not being able to say something to her. Like I remember being frustrated that she couldn’t quite understand what I was trying to tell her, but I remember what I was trying to tell her, and what I was trying to tell her was my earliest memory. Because I was trying to tell her about the dream I’d had the night before, and I remember I had a dream about Snowflake, the albino gorilla that was at the National Zoo. There was a pure white gorilla at the National Zoo, and I had a dream of an albino King Kong. … And that’s what I couldn’t get across to my mom. So I have an inception in my memory. I have another dream in my memory, and that’s my earliest memory is not being able to tell my mom my memory.”
Cats or dogs?
“Dogs.”
You get one song to listen to for the rest of your life: what is it?
“The song that comes to mind when I’m asking people this question, at the risk of being 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 as to what the answer is, because whenever somebody 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 guessed correctly — and Ethan Hawke immediately goes, ‘I know what it is. It’s three.’ That’s the number I was thinking of.”
How would you describe the rest of your life in 5 words?
“My family, my friends, fun.”
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