A hilariously tipsy Late Show transforms into The Eric Andre Show for a night
Stuck at home as he was, Eric Andre couldn’t trash Stephen Colbert’s set or anything, but the anarchic comedian seemed to invade The Late Show through the internet connection on Wednesday, nonetheless. Colbert, having bumped Andre on Monday for a Beatle, was geared up to match Andre’s signature confrontation-comedy stylings from the jump, the go-to “So, how are you weathering the pandemic?” question quickly turning into a bourbon-swilling contest. Colbert, prepared with a question about Andre joining the ranks of celebrities constructing well-stocked home saloons during lockdown, eagerly brought out his own bottle of hooch (Weller 12) and challenged his guest to bring out a matching bottle from his indeed-impressive living room bar.
Andre went with a ready bottle of Kentucky’s own Old Bardstown, and the pair were off, with Andre confessing that, for all his fancy alcoholic mixers, he’s more likely to whip up something you could find at a TGI Friday’s Happy Hour, and Colbert daring Andre to say a bad word about the 1988 Tom Cruise vehicle Cocktail. Still, the pair happily sipped their bourbon while Colbert begrudgingly steered the interview back to the long-delayed release of Andre’s “hidden camera, prank-based” semi-scripted comedy, Bad Trip. In a clip that’s been circulating since before the pandemic screwed everything, Andre is hung over the side of a building by a furious Tiffany Haddish, his pleas for mercy heeded confusedly by some innocent bystanders at a nearby taco truck. Andre and Colbert both shared their boozy admiration for the typically go-for-broke Haddish, with Colbert calling the stand-up and actress both “a joy to be with” and “pure comedy,” and Andre elaborating that the Grammy-winning Bad Trip (and Girls Trip) star is, “comedy on a cellular level.”
Speaking of cells, the two hosts continued to imbibe throughout, with Colbert emerging as the more uninhibited of the two, surprisingly. (Look, a year conducting glitchy Zoom interviews will do things to a person.) After Andre playfully mocked Colbert’s dutiful attempt to get things back on the pre-planned chat show track, Colbert was the one doing the prop destruction, announcing, “I’m not gonna do this bit now,” and eventually ripping in half the side-by-side photo of Andre and Fran Lebowitz he had at the ready. See, both Andre and Lebowitz (along with other luminaries like Whoopi Goldberg and Jerry Seinfeld) are the new voices of the New York subway system, and Andre says he looks sort of like Lebowitz, and the hell with it, according to Colbert.
Gleefully ditching the talk show schtick at Andre’s teasing prompt, the bourbon-swilling Colbert joked, “The reason I do it, you know, as long as we’re talking out of school here, is because I imagine that there’s some reason that you’re on the show to somehow, to support your product.” Cracking up the happily nonplussed Andre, Colbert continued, “While I do not care about your movie, surely you do.” Colbert did reassure the thoroughly tickled Andre, in traditional barfly camaraderie, “I care about you because you’re a very funny person who’s ready to roll with [shit.]” Rip. Drink. Bad Trip finally comes out on Netflix on March 26. It’s been a long, long year, you guys.