Stephen and Evie Colbert on family, food and the stories behind their new cookbook

Transcript

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Amna Nawaz: Stephen Colbert has been making America laugh for decades and, since 2015, on CBS' "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert."

Over the years, his wife, Evie McGee Colbert, has often gotten a mention and makes regular cameos on the show. And now the couple is sharing the ingredients that make their partnership work, especially in the kitchen. Their new cookbook "Does This Taste Funny?" is out now.

And we met up recently to talk food, family and politics for our arts and culture series, Canvas.

At New York City's Porchlight bar,

Stephen Colbert, Co-Author, "Does This Taste Funny?: Recipes Our Family Loves": I have never been interviewed in a bar before. This is nice.

Evie McGee Colbert, Co-Author, "Does This Taste Funny?: Recipes Our Family Loves": What have we got here?

Amna Nawaz: That's a great question. What is this dessert?

Over a spread of Southern specialties

Evie McGee Colbert: Oh, nice.

Stephen Colbert: And then biscuits and honey.

Amna Nawaz: Stephen and Evie McGee Colbert open up about their shared love of their shared hometown, Charleston, South Carolina, when they first met in their 20s and that inspired this cookbook together.

You say in the book that you guys live in the kitchen.

Stephen Colbert: Sure.

Amna Nawaz: I'm curious how that works.

Stephen Colbert: Well…

Amna Nawaz: Does someone take the lead? Is there like a chef/sous-chef situation?

Stephen Colbert: Every family in some ways — like, the whole thing about, like, we're talking about kitchen table issues and sitting around the kitchen table.

Evie McGee Colbert: Right.

Stephen Colbert: We're always hanging out in there, like everybody does.

Evie McGee Colbert: Right. Right. One of us is a little bossy.

Stephen Colbert: One of us.

(Laughter)

Amna Nawaz: We're not going to say who. No names.

Stephen Colbert: One of us enjoys cooking more than the other one does. That's all. I don't think I'm bossy. I think I'm just…

Evie McGee Colbert: It's true. You do. You do enjoy it.

Stephen Colbert: I'm more enthusiastic about it.

Evie McGee Colbert: Yes. We say in the cookbook…

(Crosstalk)

Amna Nawaz: So there's a chef/sous-chef vibe, or no?

Stephen Colbert: No.

Evie McGee Colbert: No, we're not good together.

(Crosstalk)

Amna Nawaz: How dare I? I apologize.

Evie McGee Colbert: You know what? The cookbook changed that. Before that, we didn't cook together. But then, of course, we had to write a cookbook together. And it turns out we do it pretty well, I think.

Amna Nawaz: The book, a compendium of everything from seafood specials and party food to desserts and drinks, started coming together during COVID.

The Colberts, along with their three mostly grown children, were locked down together in their Charleston home. The family turned their focus to a joint project, compiling recipes of the food they loved and the stories behind it.

It feels like it's as much about your family history in this book as it is about the food. Is that fair?

Evie McGee Colbert: Absolutely. Very fair.

Stephen Colbert: Yes, it's about our — yes, it's about the lives we lived growing up there, not just the food.

Evie McGee Colbert: Well, and when we started, we gathered up recipes that we have fed our kids for years, but we also reached out to family members.

And one of the things that was fun for me is, I worked on it with my mother, so we would go hunting. She couldn't remember. Like, for example, her pickled shrimp recipe is in the cookbook. I think we made it for her four times and she kept saying, that's not quite right.

Stephen Colbert: That's not right.

(Laughter)

Stephen Colbert: The book is dedicated to Evie's mom, not just because she was a great hostess and a cook of her own, but because we were writing this book near the end of your mother's life.

(Crosstalk)

Evie McGee Colbert: Right. She wasn't well, so I would be with her, a medical appointment or at the hospital or something. And it was something else to talk about, which was really nice for her and nice for me.

And I think neither one of us sort of knew where we were headed in the future, but it gave us a present moment to be together.

Amna Nawaz: Food is at the heart of major moments for the couple, including the moment they first met.

You have told about the moment you saw Evie, you knew, you knew she was the one that you were going to marry.

Stephen Colbert: Yes.

Amna Nawaz: Did you cook for her? Is that how you help to woo her, or no?

Evie McGee Colbert: Oh, no, you didn't.

Stephen Colbert: No. Actually, I don't think I was very good. Like, I — there's a recipe in Charleston, it's a shrimp dip, or — but we call it shrimp paste, because everything in Charleston has to have an old name.

And so my family made shrimp paste, and our recipe was terrible. And the first thing I ever made for Evie was shrimp paste, which is not the most attractive-sounding dish.

Evie McGee Colbert: Well, you use canned shrimp, because that's all we could afford.

(Laughter)

Stephen Colbert: I used canned shrimp. And it was terrible.

Evie McGee Colbert: There were budget constraints.

Amna Nawaz: There were budget constraints.

Stephen Colbert: Exactly.

Amna Nawaz: The first dish Evie cooked for Stephen? Her family's famous cheese biscuits.

Stephen Colbert: Her family would make thousands and thousands of cheese biscuits and distribute them around.

Amna Nawaz: That it's a family recipe.

Evie McGee Colbert: Yes, it's a family recipe. My mother did it every Christmas all year long.

Stephen Colbert: Yes.

Evie McGee Colbert: They were in the house. It was her go-to. Someone's coming over. You put a plate of those out, just like our first date. I wasn't ready.

Stephen Colbert: She was late. So, I went into the bar with her dad.

(Crosstalk)

Evie McGee Colbert: On purpose. You got to make them wait a little.

Stephen Colbert: You, Miss. You, Miss, right there.

Evie McGee Colbert: Hi.

Stephen Colbert: Hello. Hi. Lovely to meet you.

Evie McGee Colbert: Lovely to meet you.

Stephen Colbert: What is your name?

Amna Nawaz: The book isn't their first collaboration. That came during pandemic lockdowns when Evie jumped in to help Stephen host "The Late Show" from their South Carolina home on Sullivan's Island.

Stephen Colbert: Thank you.

We called it the Ed Sullivan's Island Theater.

(Laughter)

Amna Nawaz: Was that was your first professional time working together?

Evie McGee Colbert: It was.

Stephen Colbert: Yes. And we were terrified. I was terrified.

(Crosstalk)

Amna Nawaz: Her eyes went wide when she said, yes, it was.

Evie McGee Colbert: It was. It really was. And there were very funny moments that now are funny at the time were slightly stressful, where he would turn to me and say something like, "I can't hear Tom Hanks."

And I would say, "I don't know what to do."

(Laughter)

Stephen Colbert: She was my crew on the couch with a headset and all these wires around her. She's like, I don't know what button to push.

The polls are showing we won by numbers you have never even heard of. We got smeventeen percent, 100 didgeridoo.

Amna Nawaz: Back in his studio, Stephen Colbert is back to doing what he does best, bringing levity to a heavy time and sometimes heavy topics.

Is there such toxicity around the discourse sometimes?

Stephen Colbert: Sure.

Amna Nawaz: Do you find it's harder today to be funny about what's going on in the world?

Stephen Colbert: It's a gift to us that we get to go out there and do the jokes for the audience, and we get to realize that we're not crazy, and that these things that are driving us crazy or making us anxious are also resonating with the audience.

But toxicity itself is worth making fun of. Like, that's just — the fact of how bad things are is something you have to make fun of.

Amna Nawaz: Yes. Is it the kind of thing where, Evie, he leaves it all at work? Or do you talk about these things at home?

Evie McGee Colbert: Oh, we talk…

Stephen Colbert: We talk about it.

Evie McGee Colbert: Unfortunately, we talk about it a lot.

Stephen Colbert: All the time, yes. We've always been news junkies.

Evie McGee Colbert: Always been news junkies.

But yes, we do talk about it.

Stephen Colbert: "PBS News Hour," number one.

Amna Nawaz: He's long blended current events and comedy, but this year, with this particular election cycle, Colbert says there's just a lot more to talk about.

Stephen Colbert: Right now, what's interesting is, no matter what happens with the election, it's something new.

Evie McGee Colbert: Yes.

Stephen Colbert: You know, the excitement of as much — as I admire Mr. Biden, is that the excitement that, well, there is a change. And this change is as good as a holiday sometimes. And there's something new to talk about.

(Crosstalk)

Stephen Colbert: One of the jokes that I did after the switch-off between Biden and Vice President Harris was that, in the monologue, I just found myself dancing around.

I was just kind of excited, and I just turned to the camera and said — it was first thing in my mind. I said, this is the dance of a guy who gets to talk about something new for the first time in five years.

(Laughter)

Amna Nawaz: His own politics lean left. He refused to even say former President Trump's name for a couple of years.

Do you have red lines, like people you won't talk to. Like, would you have former President Trump on the show?

Stephen Colbert: I have had him before, and he was kind of boring. So, no.

Amna Nawaz: No.

Stephen Colbert: Yes. No. No. I don't like to have people on the show who I don't think are going to be honest agents of their own ideas.

Politicians always represent an idea. So if I think a politician is disingenuous, not to point out Mr. Trump specifically, because there are many politicians I wouldn't want to talk to that I think do not honestly represent what they actually believe, but are rather just playing to a crowd. So, that's just no fun.

Amna Nawaz: "The Late Show" on CBS is number one among all late-night shows, some of which are struggling with a changing landscape. Audiences may come to Colbert for the laughs, but seem to be staying for more.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA): We have to learn more about trust and peace and learning about each other, rather than…

Amna Nawaz: Rare moments of engaged conversation, like this from his recent interview with Nancy Pelosi.

Stephen Colbert: As you can see with the protest out here, that answer is unsatisfying to some people.

Amna Nawaz: There were these pro-Palestinian protesters and she said, I can't hear what they are saying. And you took a moment to make sure she heard the questions that they were asking. Why?

Stephen Colbert: Well, I want to be respectful to my guests, but I promised the people who had protested during the first act of the interview with Nancy Pelosi that I would ask the question if they would sit and listen to what she had to say.

And, also, there's no way to move on from a subject unless you address the subject.

Amna Nawaz: That feels like something you may have learned in 30-plus years of marriage together, no?

(Laughter)

Stephen Colbert: Yes. It is good to address the subject.

(Crosstalk)

Evie McGee Colbert: Well, and listening. And I think what you did so well at that moment, that's what conversation is about, that we have to listen to the issue that is bothering someone, so you can respond to it.

I think that's also in our marriage. You have to listen and then be able to respond. And I think we do. We've managed to figure out how to do that.

Stephen Colbert: I'm sorry. I missed some of that.

(Laughter)

Amna Nawaz: There are more collaborations and laughs to come as the two run a production company together.

Stephen and Evie Colbert, thank you so very much. Such a pleasure.

Evie McGee Colbert: Thank you so much.

Stephen Colbert: Oh, thank you.

Evie McGee Colbert: It's been lovely. Appreciate it.

Stephen Colbert: Cheers.

Amna Nawaz: Cheers.

And we have more from Stephen and Evie Colbert online. Taking some lessons learned while cooking together, they discuss the art of an apology and how people who disagree can find a way to get along. That's on our YouTube page.