my experience being in the audience for the late show with stephen colbert two times
very fun! i recommend :)
i got the privilege of being in the audience for the late show with stephen colbert two times, once in january and once today, and my experience was pretty different each time. i’ll give my rundown of what to expect if you manage to snag tickets and also my review of the experience!
how’d you get the tickets in the first place?
through 1iota.com. you can snag tickets there for a bunch of late-night shows, including the tonight show, late night, the daily show, after midnight, jimmy kimmel live!, and the late show.
try and request as many as you can. you’ll end up being waitlisted for a lot of these because some of these shows are just That Popular (especially the tonight show…) so if you go a little trigger happy and get too many you can always cancel and give a ticket to someone else. for july i placed at least like five different waitlist requests for both late night and the late show and ended up only getting one.
for colbert, there are two different kinds of tickets: priority and general. the first time i had general, and the second time was priority. the only difference between the two is that general is more of a “standby” section and priority gives you guaranteed seats so you can go into the theater a bit early, which is useful if it’s freezing out (like it was in late january) or disgustingly humid out.
regardless of your ticket type, try and get there early, ‘cause you get better seats. i heard somewhere that if you end up getting turned away (either you’re late or the theater’s at capacity) you get priority seats for your next taping, but i’ve never tried that so i can’t confirm.
the waiting game
once you get to the theater, you show a page your ticket, they check your id1, let you into the queue, and you get wristbanded. make sure your wristband is visible, because that’s basically your ticket in. there’s a fair bit of waiting involved (especially if you’re general 💔) so maybe bring a charger. general gets in around an hour after priority does.
before you go in you get a pretty standard safety debriefing, and then you head into the theater and wait in another line in the lobby2. they have little tvs playing highlight reels so it’s not like you have nothing to do. plus there’s still some service.
BRING A LAYER!!! the ed sullivan is cold.
they let you use the bathroom on line, and then at around 4:15 they start letting you into the actual theater.
inside the theater
you’re technically not supposed to take photos or videos inside the theater, but everyone and their MOM was breaking that rule.
my seats last time were pretty decent. i was up in the balcony (“the shitty seats”, as stephen joked) but there’s still a lot to see. there’s, of course, monitors so you can see pretty much what the audience at home will see, but for someone like me who’s a bit of a film/tv nerd, you can see all the moving parts that make the show work. plus, the architecture in the ed sullivan? GORGEOUS. STUNNING. the theater has this big dome on top with a nightly projection (and if colbert ever does bits with god, He’s up there), and there’s also projections on the side walls that have stephen and the late show band in this very pretty stained glass art style.
my seats this time, though? AMAZING. i was five rows away from the stage (stage left, if you care about that sort of thing) and i had an aisle seat, meaning i could see everything up close. it took me a GOOD WHILE to really register how close i was to the whole ordeal happening. they play some top 40 music while they file everyone in to amp you up (there was a really weird remix of “butter” by bts, and “break my soul” by beyonce played both times i was there which was kind of funny) and then eventually at around 5, the warmup comic comes out.
before the actual show
the warmup comic is paul mecurio. he gets you used to being loud (the audience is always mic-ed, though it’s set to half the level of stephen’s…duh) and does this fun bit where he just does some crowdwork with the audience. it’s pretty fun and all for shits and giggles, and then he plugs his own stuff after he’s done.
then the stage manager mark comes out and introduces himself, and he lays out the structure of the show:
cold open
monologue
desk piece
interviews
there’s a few times in the show where mark will stand on stage and wave the script in a circle, that’s the signal to more or less just go batshit. stand, cheer, whoop, chant “stephen”, etc. and there’s a few times in the show where the monitors will say “applause” just to transition into commercial. they don’t add laugh tracks or applause, so they really emphasize how loud the audience has to be.
then louis cato and the late show band pull up and do a jazzy number. it keeps the energy up. this whole pre-show thing is just about getting the audience excited. which makes sense, because the crowd is so important for a good show3.
louis asks "stephen, how are you?” and stephen RUNS ON STAGE to do some q&a while the audience goes batshit. here are the qs and as that i remember.
favorite strike force five episode? (i asked this one lol)
episode 5 is a classic but episode 3 is good toofavorite movie you’ve seen recently?
oppenheimer (this was in january)five most recent songs on spotify?
he uses apple music (BOOO)craziest music festival anecdote?
he’s never really been to a music festival, but he did tell us a story about sneaking into a chicago theater to watch paul simon + a bunch of other musicians perform and watching from ABOVE PAUL SIMON.what’s in the gift bags they give guests?
it used to be stuff from charleston, south carolina. now he’s not entirely sure but they apparently do have socks.
socks would be useful because the ed sullivan is so cold lol
do you want a blanket? i can give you a blanket just give it back.
the show
the guests the first time were bryan cranston and michele norris, and the second time the guests were jon m. chu and matthew macfadyen (who had to record his interview the day before, so the second taping was shorter ☹️).
my question the second time i went was going to be “how long did it take you to learn the apple by charli xcx dance?” but that more or less got answered for me when he did the dance again and i saw a staff member dancing in the aisle in case he forgot the moves. he pretty much got it, though. stephen colbert is brat.
i don’t remember much about the january show monologue other than taylor swift super bowl conspiracies, but the july one was about kamala harris and how she’s essentially running a “meme” campaign, which made me remember this thing i wrote about gen z and late night (smooth plug, maggie) and how it’s probably going to be more important now that the dems are running a gen z focused campaign. but enough about politics.
i do remember there being a monologue flub both times. i was watching and waiting for the little scissors-motion that colbert supposedly does when he has to cut a monologue joke (he mentioned it in strike force five, i promise i’m not just being weird i’m just obsessed with that podcast) but i don’t think he did it either time which was sad.
post-show
after the goodnights, if you’re lucky you get to watch a musical performance. in january i got to watch asake’s “lonely at the top”.
if you’re not lucky, crew thanks you and you’re sent out to go home. they give out some flyers for paul’s broadway show and standup at the door and then that’s pretty much it.
so. do i recommend it?
1000%. even if you don’t live and breathe late-night, i still think it’s a fun bucket list experience you should do. ESPECIALLY if you live in new york, because wow our city is kind of spoiled with just how many shows tape here.
i believe you have to be 16+ to go and apparently 18+ to go solo, but i went by myself today and i’m technically not 18 yet. i guess they don’t really care.
i gotta say, though, 30 rock has a much better waiting area. there’s couches and even a photobooth.
tbh i think i liked the second crowd more, but that might just be some recency bias.