Comedian Stephen Colbert has been tapped to take over The Late Show next year, but what viewers might not realize is that Colbert had two other opportunities to work on the CBS show — including an internship that he secured by accident during college.
In anticipation of the switch, retiring host David Letterman invited the Colbert Report jokester to his show on Tuesday night, where the two men talked shop and goofed around. Letterman then asked Colbert about how he had successfully been offered a Late Show internship in 1986. And Colbert explained it was all accidental.
His girlfriend at the time had been interviewing for the internship, and Colbert waited in the hallway. But one of the interviewers asked Colbert to sit down and talk anyway.
“We had a 15 minute conversation, I got the internship, she did not,” Colbert explained, before adding, “The relationship did not last.”
But Colbert turned down the internship because it didn’t pay.
“It’s an expensive city,” he joked. “Listen, Dave, I gotta ask — the next job I’m taking here, that pays, right?”
And in 1997, Colbert and a fellow writer submitted a sample of their work to The Late Show, but when the show got back to them, the two had already started another gig. But Colbert had dug up his original Top 10 list, Top 10 Cocktails for Santa, which he read on Tuesday night.
Watch Colbert’s interview and Top 10 list below:
