"Watching guest after guest, I've come to understand that this farewell to Colbert is a chance for deeply famous people to fangirl out a bit, something they so rarely get to do. People come up to them all the time and say stuff like 'Orange County helped heal my relationship with my hometown!' and they just have to stand there and smile about it."
"On Have I Got News for You, Gianmarco Soresi did some inadvertent crowdwork by remarking on how much less enthusiastic the audience was for his joke about America being Israel's pawn in the Middle East than the one about the Iran war being a distraction from the Epstein files."
"When Conan O'Brien appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! to talk Oscars, he reacted with anxiety to the chanting of his name: 'You sound like an angry jury, so just settle down.' The audiences are getting more out of this than the celebrity."
John Lithgow's poem for Stephen Colbert exemplifies the hagiographic nature of The Late Show's finale era. Colbert appears uncomfortable with the excessive fawning from guests and audiences. The farewell period provides famous people a rare opportunity to express genuine admiration for the host, mirroring how they typically receive praise from ordinary people. Recent late-night episodes show audience tension and awkwardness, with comedians like Gianmarco Soresi and Conan O'Brien reacting with discomfort to audience reactions. These interactions reveal that audiences derive more satisfaction from celebrity encounters than the celebrities themselves experience.
Read at Vulture
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