Stephen Colbert got an unexpected assist while delivering his monologue Tuesday night when an audience member loudly reacted to a joke setup involving Beyoncé.
The moment came as Colbert was delivering a bit about a recent headline: “More technical news, hard drives with Beyoncé’s unreleased music were stolen in Atlanta. It’s sad, isn’t it?” The crowd chuckled, but one woman’s audible yelp of distress drew more laughs—and Colbert’s attention.
“Was that you? Was that you?” Colbert asked from the stage, locking in on the fan. “Lift your head up. Can we get a shot of this woman? She took that hard! Ma’am, you took that really hard! You are really upset.”
That’s when the audience member declared, “That’s mother!”—referring to Beyoncé with the kind of reverence usually reserved for religious icons.
Colbert played along: “That is mother. That is mother and I go so far as to say ‘Boots, king.’ I don’t know what anything that we just said means.”
The Late Show host kept the bit going with one last jab before going back on script: “Somebody get that woman a Xanax.”
Watch their entire exhange below:
