PLUME: Was performing something that you did at that time?
COLBERT: Yeah, I did a few plays in high school and I did a few plays in college. I had a teacher there, named Steve Coy, who was a professor there, who was really a great guy. Very supportive, and very different from the rest of the teachers at Hamp-Sydney. He was sort of a fun – an unreconstructed liberal, in an organically conservative place.
PLUME: This was, what, the dawn of the Reagan era?
COLBERT: This was ’82, yeah. It was “Morning in America,” if you remember. We were all very sleepy. I’m not such a morning person.
PLUME: I’m assuming that your professor was a complete night person…
COLBERT: He was a complete person. He was very open, saying that the reason he went to the Yale Drama School is because the actors he met had the best parties. And I did some fun things there. My favorite thing we did was Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Momma’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad, by Arthur Kopit, which was sort of a surreal, very dark farce. I thought, “This is for me. Dark farce.”
PLUME: So that was the epiphany moment?
COLBERT: Kind of. Yeah. “These people are saying interesting things and saying it in a very silly way.
PLUME: And getting away with quite a bit.
COLBERT: Getting away with – yes, yes.
PLUME: Was there ever a sort of anarchic spirit?
COLBERT: Sure, I’m sort of an iconoclast, in an odd way.
PLUME: Sort of a button-down iconoclast?
COLBERT: I am. I’m a khaki-pants, blue blazer, brass buttons iconoclast.
PLUME: If I remember the Strangers With Candy commentary well, just not pleated pants…
COLBERT: No, no – no pleats. No pleats. So yeah, I have a healthy disrespect for authority.
PLUME: Do you think the sort of covert nature of that disrespect often ingratiates you towards the establishment, before you undermine it?
COLBERT: Absolutely. Absolutely. I think my look gives me a subversive quality – at least I’ve been told so.
PLUME: Something that you consciously pursued, or it just happened to be that that’s way it is?
COLBERT: It’s just I happen to be comfortable this way, and I don’t see how I look having anything to do with how I think.
PLUME: Do you think at the time – I mean, you’ve obviously experienced different college cultures and different performing cultures – do you think there’s generally a disrespect for the type of person that doesn’t go all out?
COLBERT: In what? Where?
PLUME: As far as appearance – the person who seems to be button-down. Do you think there’s sort of a, you know – “if you don’t look it, then you don’t walk it” kind of attitude?
COLBERT: What, among performers?
PLUME: Among performers, or among the college crowd at that time that was still desperately trying to cling on to the counterculture…
COLBERT: Not Hamp-Sydney, because it was all male and all of them wore blue blazers. But at Northwestern, there certainly was. By the time I got to Northwestern, it was an “I’m going to live forever.” It was torn sweatshirts and legwarmers, on both the guys and the girls. I didn’t fit that at all.
PLUME: But again, that was morning in America…
COLBERT: But not there. Again, those people were there to be artists, and so they were by nature sort of iconoclast – the time was Reagan, and they weren’t going to buy into that stuff.
PLUME: So you were living in an episode of Fame.
COLBERT: I was. I was, actually. I was living in an episode of Fame. Not only an episode, I would say maybe even the pilot.
PLUME: Before everything was fully solidified and people knew what their direction was. What lead to your decision to transfer to Northwestern?
COLBERT: Well, there were girls there, you see. I wanted to study performing – I had decided that the one thing I worked hard at was performing, and it seemed like a hint to me that when I was doing that, when I was working on that, nothing else seemed as important. I was willing to work hard and long, with virtually no reward. Not even anybody coming to the show… not a big theater crowd at Hamp-Sydney. And I didn’t care. I was so happy to do it. I thought, “There’s a hint. I should do that, then.” I wanted to get an undergraduate degree, and I heard that Northwestern had the best undergraduate program. So, I was happily and luckily accepted.
PLUME: Was it something that your parents supported?
COLBERT: Absolutely.
PLUME: Because they saw it as a future career path, or they just knew that you were enjoying it?
COLBERT: Knowing I was enjoying it … and that it wouldn’t kill me.
PLUME: How big was the culture shock when you went to Northwestern?
COLBERT: It was huge. There was a sizable, openly gay student population – especially in the theater. There’s a whole theater school there, it’s not just a major. They have their own building, they have their own dorms. I didn’t live in those dorms, but if you wanted to, you could virtually see no one else on campus if you were a theater major. You could go to those buildings, you could go to those dorms, you had your own little snack area – everything. Your own little field behind buildings. It really got very insular.
PLUME: Did you try to avoid that insular nature?
COLBERT: Yeah, I had no interest in that. Again, that seemed like, “Why don’t I just join a frat if I’m going to be that insular?” I didn’t have to, but I still took – I had finished my core curriculum at Hamp-Sydney, but I still took regular old classes when I got to Northwestern.
PLUME: So you transferred after your second year at Hampden-Sydney?
COLBERT: Yeah, I came there as a two-year, and then really had to cram, because it was a three year program at Northwestern, and I did it in two years.
PLUME: With a theater major – did you have a minor?
COLBERT: No. I didn’t have time. So, I was a theater major – and you know, I came from a place where everyone was a doctor or professor, and at Hamp-Sydney, everybody was Ann, and Bud, and David – it was all first names, and if you called them sir or ma’am, they thought you were being a smartass … It was cold as bejeezus. The coldest winter in Chicago’s history was my first winter there.
PLUME: I guess that definitely would be a bit of a shock.
COLBERT: Yeah, it was negative 70 with the wind chill, one night. Negative 39 in a phone booth – like negative 39 with no wind.
PLUME: Did that make you reconsider your choice in schools?
COLBERT: No, absolutely not. I loved it there.
PLUME: How intense was the theater program at Northwestern?
COLBERT: I don’t have anything to compare it to, but I had dance in the morning at 9:00 A.M., I went from dance into water performance class, and another performance class, then into dramatic criticism, then I went into the history of costume and décor, and then into scene design, and then at night I had to do crews for the shows that were running there. They had better facilities than practically anyplace else that I’ve ever worked professionally. There’re huge, gorgeous theaters there with every professional amenity. And everybody there was very serious – “I’m going to live forever,” sort of is not an exaggeration. Everybody there was there because they were very serious about it. So, it got a little bit too serious sometimes, but everybody worked very hard and the teachers were very demanding.
PLUME: Any cautionary tales as far as the seriousness there, or something you reacted against? I mean, not someone cracking in a bell tower with a shotgun, but …
COLBERT: No, no, no. There were people who sort of emotionally cracked under the strain of being asked to express ourselves in ways that we hadn’t before. I was one of those, but there was nobody in the bell tower.
PLUME: Cracking how so?
COLBERT: You know, the objective of all of the acting classes really was for you to show how you feel, and not to be clever and not to show all the tricks you could do – a lot of people came there with some experience and a lot of times they would bring whatever tricks they had, to be entertaining to the classes. The teachers wanted to strip all those away, and say, “No, could you be emotionally honest onstage?” The first stage of emotional honesty, or at least the resistance to being emotionally honest, is to be angry. When anger doesn’t work, you try crying. But those are all just defense mechanisms to shut off how you actually feel about everything. We all build these sort of walls to keep ourselves from showing our true emotions, because they can be seen as weaknesses.
PLUME: Conscious defense mechanisms, or unconscious defense mechanisms?
COLBERT: You consciously want to defend yourself, and you unconsciously – I don’t know if conscious or unconscious is the right way. When you’re being asked to be open emotionally, you defend yourself emotionally. So, I don’t know if it’s conscious or unconscious, but the emotion of defense is anchor. Then, after anger doesn’t stop the person from trying to get inside your defenses, the next one is sort of the emotion of pity, which is crying or sadness. I think these are all just emotional gambits, to get someone to leave you alone. Everybody went through that.
PLUME: Which one did you latch on to, more so than the other?
COLBERT: Oh, anger. My teacher was afraid I was going to punch her. She did. She came up to me once, she said, “I think you probably could use a little therapy.” “Oh really?” “Yeah, because I was physically afraid that you were going to punch me today in class.”
PLUME: Did you ever consider yourself, prior to that, to be repressed in any way?
COLBERT: No, no. Not really.
PLUME: Was it just getting past that button-down nature, to a certain extent?
COLBERT: There’s a detached, judgmental quality I have, that put me in great stead for The Daily Show. But now I’m aware of it, at least.
PLUME: But something at that time you had to definitely overcome?
COLBERT: Sure.
PLUME: At least to get a grade…
COLBERT: Yeah, probably.
PLUME: So, was it the kind of curriculum that allowed you to gravitate towards a certain genre, or it was broad-based and made you experience every genre, as far as performing?
COLBERT: It was very broad-based. Of course, the students wanted to do whatever was popular at the time.
PLUME: Would that be Cats?
COLBERT: No… what was on Broadway? Chorus Line was on Broadway. A Bomb in Gilead… and what else? I forget. I didn’t go in for that, because I didn’t have a theatrical vocabulary, or much experience in that world.
PLUME: Were there any roles that you found yourself being assigned to more often than not?
COLBERT: No, they tried not to do that. They actually left it up to us to choose, on assignments.
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