From the archives: Stephen Colbert on “This Week with George Stephanopoulos”

Hello, fellow Colbert-philes. I was doing some research for our sister site (Colbert University), and I stumbled across some footage from Stephen’s appearance on George Stephanopoulos’ show. When I realized that the footage wasn’t here on the site, I thought I’d better rectify that omission ASAP.

From the “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” in March of 2006 (before Jon Stewart’s Oscar gig):

Colbert: Oscars ‘Could Be a Big One for Jon’
Voices: A Weekly Feature on ‘This Week’Stephen Colbert. (ABCNEWS)
From ThisWeek March 5, 2006

Stephen Colbert carried Jon Stewart’s water for years on “The Daily Show.” So we turned to the man who now stars in his own show, “The Colbert Report,” for his take on how his old boss should handle tonight’s Oscars.

Stephen Colbert: I think it’s great Jon’s doing the Oscars. I would have been out there and done it with him, but I had to do “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.” I made a promise and I don’t go back on my word.

This could be a big one for Jon. After all, 10 [billion] to 15 billion people watch — 20 [billion], 100 billion people — watch the Oscars. And so this could be enormous for him. And if he fails, it could be terrible. This could be the end of his career.

I expect a lot of jokes on the war in Iraq, a lot of jokes on abortion. It’s a funny word, like “guacamole.” I say he’d probably do a lot of jokes on the refugees from Katrina.

. . .

Most of all, I’m glad I’m talking about this today, because I think it is never too early to pre-judge someone’s performance. Finally, I would just say, “Good luck,” because I think he will fail. I think I can say that because I am his friend. Yeah, it’s not going to work.

Full text of article and video clips here

For your convenience, I’m embedding the video of some of the outtakes from that appearance here (the footage as aired and the higher quality footage of this extended take is available at the ABC link). I love that the people filming were evidently suppressing laughter the whole time they were recording. Somehow, I’m betting that happens a lot when people are around Stephen.

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