For Gary Oldman, Stephen Colbert will travel. The Late Show host traveled to London to shoot a pre-taped interview with the actor, devoting an entire episode’s worth of chatting to the sitdown.
The actor currently stars the Apple TV+ series Slow Horses, though Thursday night’s lengthy interview served as more of a career-spanning masterclass from the actor.
Colbert’s interview with Oldman also touched on the influence of the late Gene Hackman. While it served as a timely tribute to the late actor, the interview was recorded before the news that Hackman had died.
In one of the interview’s highlights, Colbert plays with the concept of Oldman’s oft-farting Slow Horses character by inserting flatulence sounds into Oldman’s other roles. The bit sent the dramatic actor into hysterics.
Colbert’s conversation with Oldman spanned four segments overall, with the host introducing each portion of the interview from his desk at the top of the act.
With his Colbert interview, Gary Oldman now joins a shortlist of big names like Barbra Streisand and Christopher Nolan—the select few for whom the show has upended its format, traveling to the guest (rather than vice versa) for a full-episode interview.
The pre-taped interview apparently caused some disappointment among attendees of yesterday’s taping who were hoping to see Oldman in the flesh. One audience member described the experience of waiting three hours to get into yesterday’s taping, only to find out after the monologue that the Oldman interview was previously recorded.
“We watched Stephen Colbert sit at his desk and watch a video of his interview from one month ago,” they wrote on Reddit. “The disappointing part is really that none of that was communicated to us.”
Watch a playlist of Oldman’s complete appearance Thursday night’s Late Show (beginning with the show’s cold open, in which Colbert sets the ground rules) below:
