You could say that Stephen Colbert is thirsty … for the purveyor of some very fine wine.
The host of “The Late Show” told the Hollywood Reporter in an interview published Wednesday that there is still one dream guest he’s “desperate” to get on his show before its final episode on Thursday, May 21.
“The pope is my white whale,” Colbert, a devout Catholic, said of Pope Leo XIV. “I wrote him. I said, ‘Come on!’ No, I said, ‘Your Holiness, I hope this letter finds you well or, at the very least, infallible. Would you please come on my show? We don’t have to talk about politics.’”
Bless his heart, because if the first U.S. pontiff did actually appear as a guest on “The Late Show,” it would certainly be perceived as political, even if they avoided the subject altogether. This is mostly because President Donald Trump has a longstanding beef with the pope and Colbert, who have both criticized his politics, with the latter being much more blunt about it than the former.
“I didn’t really think he’d want to talk about politics or anything like that,” Colbert told THR about the pope. “Little did I know that the guy could throw a punch [as he recently proved, feuding with Trump over the Iran war]. I said, ‘Let’s talk about being an American Catholic.’”
