Stephen Colbert

I began to feel like I was stumbling downhill with an armful of bottles and that I couldn't actually keep up the discipline because it took discipline to remind myself every day to be the character.

Don't be yourself.

And I began to wonder, well, what would it be like to be me?

And so I decided a couple of years before the show ended that I was going to end the show.

And it was not because I didn't like it anymore.

I still liked it, but I just thought, like, I'm not sure if I can actually keep this up without hurting someone.

Yeah.

I don't know.

It's a feeling.

I thought maybe I would make some big mistake with the character because he says he would say terrible things.

And I got away with some of the terrible things he would say or do because it was all filtered through his mask.

But if I didn't maintain the mask, it would just be me being terrible.

And and that's and he would say hateful things or hurtful things.

And I thought, well, if I if I don't play this tightly, if I don't if I don't if I don't if I don't hit the bell just right all the time, not that it was a perfect performance.

What I mean is if I didn't maintain this discipline and I felt my discipline slipping, if I didn't maintain that discipline, that I would simply slide into being like the thing that I was mocking.

It fell out of the sky.

It was absolutely no part of my plans when I decided to end the Colbert Report.

That happened literally years later.

It was a complete surprise to me.

It hadn't been an ambition of mine.