Stephen Colbert has spent years telling guests that “The Colbert Questionert” is scientifically designed to reveal their true selves. On Wednesday night, with one episode of The Late Show left to go, he finally submitted to it himself.
Colbert had long promised that when his own turn came, he would have a friend administer the questions. Instead, he had 15.
Former CBS newsman (and frequent Late Show guest) John Dickerson served as moderator for the extended segment, introducing a parade of celebrity questioners—Billy Crystal, “Weird Al” Yankovic, Josh Brolin, Martha Stewart, Mark Hamill, Jim Gaffigan, Jeff Daniels, Tiffany Haddish, Evie McGee Colbert, Amy Sedaris, Ben Stiller, Aubrey Plaza, James Taylor, and Robert De Niro—each assigned one of the Questionert’s familiar prompts.
The result was less a standard Questionert than a living scrapbook of Colbert’s comedy world: old friends, frequent guests, family, odd detours, and a few answers that felt calibrated for the moment.
Colbert picked a tomato sandwich in summer and Katz’s pastrami the rest of the year, confessed that he prefers the aisle because he has “the bladder of a baby chipmunk,” and gave the final five-word answer of the segment an unmistakably valedictory shape: “My family, my friends, fun.”
Colbert’s answers, in Questionert order:
Best sandwich: In summer, a tomato sandwich on thin white bread, with salt, pepper and maybe a little mayo, eaten “over the sink.” The rest of the year, hot pastrami on rye from Katz’s, with mustard, coleslaw if available, and muenster if the deli isn’t kosher.
First concert: Chuck Mangione’s Children of Sanchez tour at the Gaillard Auditorium in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1977, with his mother.
Scariest animal: A trapdoor spider. Colbert noted that a scientist once named one after him: Aptostichus stephencolberti.
Apples or oranges: Apples. “You can’t put peanut butter on an orange,” Colbert explained.
Asked someone for an autograph?: Yes. Colbert recalled asking Steve Martin to sign a cutout of Martin’s head from a bit they had done together. He framed it and hung it in his office where a clock used to be. “In my office,” he said, “it’s always Steve Martin o’clock.”
What happens when we die?: Colbert said he imagines “some continuance of some kind,” describing it as a dispersion of the self into “some other greater being.” Jim Gaffigan summarized it another way: “What you’re saying is we become Febreze.”
Favorite action movie: Raiders of the Lost Ark, after briefly considering whether The Thing counted.
Window or aisle?: Aisle.
Favorite smell: The scent of his wife Evie’s rose lotion after she has gotten out of the shower and started getting ready to go out.
Least favorite smell: A childhood memory involving rancid grease and sugar under a neighbor’s sink—a smell Colbert said he never encountered again, but never forgot.
Earliest memory: Watching his mother paint a bedroom when he was about three, while trying and failing to tell her about a dream involving an albino King Kong inspired by Snowflake, the albino gorilla.
Cats or dogs: Dogs.
One song forever: Glenn Gould’s performance of Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words, Op. 19, No. 1.
Number he was thinking of: Three. Colbert noted that Meryl Streep and Ethan Hawke had both guessed it correctly in past Questionert segments. (They weren’t the only ones: watch our supercut.)
Describe the rest of your life in five words: “My family, my friends, fun.”
The celebrity handoffs gave the segment the feel of a farewell lap. Crystal was there to challenge Colbert’s sandwich logic. Brolin came bearing a nautical gift. Stewart noted that she was “very sad” because she might not be back on the show again. Haddish turned the window-or-aisle question into a flirtatious travel invitation. Evie McGee Colbert got the most intimate answer of the night. De Niro, handed the “what number were you thinking of?” question, gave his own answer: “2.5 million,” which he identified as “the number of Epstein files Trump still hasn’t released.”
The Late Show first introduced “The Colbert Questionert” in 2021, and it quickly became one of Colbert’s signature segments, with 82 celebrities—not including Colbert—taking it over the years. Tom Hanks was the segment’s first participant, helping establish the format: the same 15 questions, asked in the same order, designed to reveal something about a guest beyond the usual late-night interview.
Colbert has said the segment was inspired in part by Colbert’s 2019 interview with Keanu Reeves, whose response to a question about death—“I know that the ones who love us will miss us”—became one of the show’s most widely shared moments. The Questionert effectively turned that kind of exchange into a repeatable late-night format, one that became something of a rite of passage for major guests.
The Late Show’s series finale airs Thursday night. Little is known about what’s planned, with CBS revealing only that it will run long—past the show’s usual one-hour time slot.
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