'Does This Taste Funny?' is a Colbert family cookbook

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. My guests are Stephen Colbert and Evie McGee Colbert. They're partners in their marriage, as well as in their production company, and she makes regular appearances on his CBS show, "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert." During the COVID lockdown, when he hosted "The Late Show" from their home, she was his partner on the show, acting as a producer, sound engineer and serving as an audience of one. I loved hearing her laughing at his jokes. They're typically not partners in the kitchen because they have different approaches to cooking. But now they have a new cookbook they co-authored with the great title, "Does This Taste Funny?: Recipes Our Family Loves."

Shrimp are well represented in the book because Stephen and Evie grew up in coastal South Carolina, where they still have a home. Each recipe in the book is preceded by the story behind it and memories associated with it, so you actually learn about Stephen and Evie as you read the recipes. If you watch Colbert's show, you know he likes a good drink. The book has a whole chapter on drinks. Each episode of "The Late Show" opens with a monologue, typically satirizing a major event in the news. Colbert doesn't pull his punches, especially when it comes to threats against democracy. Stephen, Evie, welcome to FRESH AIR. It's such a pleasure to have you back on the show, Stephen, and to talk to you, Evie.

EVIE MCGEE COLBERT: Thank you.

STEPHEN COLBERT: Thanks, Terry.

MCGEE COLBERT: I'm excited to be here, truly.

COLBERT: It's been too long.

GROSS: Oh, yeah. So first question to you, Stephen. How do you find time to cook? I can't believe that you find time. I don't have time to cook, and I don't have half the job that you do. I make, like, omelets and heat-roasted chicken (laughter).

COLBERT: Evie will tell you, it's relaxing for me. That's what I want to do. You know, on a Saturday afternoon, if I've got a moment and I've got it to myself, especially if there's a farmers market in town or something like that, I want to go get a pork belly and just start marinating that or start, you know - you know what? I've got some brioche. I've got eggs. I've never done an almond bread pudding before. Let's try that with maybe the crispy top. Ooh, I'll make a cartouche on the top and sort of steam it in a bain-marie first, then I'll take it off. And, ooh, what about a bourbon caramel? Like, I get - and I don't - what drives Evie crazy sometimes is that then I don't eat it.

GROSS: (Laughter).

MCGEE COLBERT: Yeah, you're not cooking to make food for yourself. You're just cooking to make a process, I think.

COLBERT: Right. I love process. I love one thing becoming another thing. Well, it's kind of like doing the show. You get there in the morning, and there's - I don't know - maybe nine stories that are generally dominating the conversation over the last 24 hours. We have good pitches on six of them, and three of them then dominate the monologue because we've boiled it all down. We've taken - that's why I like the show "Chopped," because they take - you know, you have these baskets at the beginning of the show where there's like, you have octopus and licorice, and you have smoked salt. Here, make an entree or whatever. That's what doing the show is like. And kind of you have to love process to do a show on a daily basis. And that's related to food for me. One thing becomes another thing with a little care, a little love and a little imagination. And I find it incredibly smoothing. Smoothing? It's also smoothing.

(LAUGHTER)

COLBERT: It's also bloating. But it's also incredibly soothing to me. And then I'll just try to go give the food away.

GROSS: So, Evie, if Colbert is doing all this cooking but doesn't eat it, do you get to eat it? And do you do a lot of the cooking that you actually both eat?

MCGEE COLBERT: Well, I do get to eat what he makes, which is often delicious, always...

GROSS: Often?

MCGEE COLBERT: Often, often.

(LAUGHTER)

MCGEE COLBERT: I would say often (laughter).

COLBERT: Well, I'm experimenting. I'm imagining what it's going to be like. And, you know, it doesn't...

MCGEE COLBERT: Sometimes, it doesn't work.

COLBERT: Things don't always work out, Terry.

MCGEE COLBERT: (Laughter).

GROSS: When I was growing up, my mother wasn't much of a cook. But he had two, like, fantastic dishes that she made, and I always looked forward to those. But Monday nights I'd almost be in tears, because Mondays are bad enough when you're going to school.

MCGEE COLBERT: Yeah.

GROSS: And she'd sometimes make broiled mackerel, which is a very bitter fish.

MCGEE COLBERT: Ooh, yeah.

COLBERT: Yes, oily.

GROSS: Especially when you're a kid. Yeah. And with, like, canned string beans.

MCGEE COLBERT: Oh, God.

GROSS: And - I know.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: And lettuce with no dressing on it.

COLBERT: Sure.

GROSS: Iceberg. And I'd nearly be in tears. Later in the week, the food got better.

MCGEE COLBERT: (Laughter).

GROSS: So I'm wondering, with each of you, the recipes in your book look absolutely sumptuous, but were there meals that you had that nearly brought you to tears when you were growing up?

COLBERT: Oh, my God.

MCGEE COLBERT: Oh, yeah. Sure.

GROSS: (Laughter).

COLBERT: Yes. When I was a kid, my - you know, again, 11 kids. And also Catholic, so, you know, no meat on Fridays. We had so many Mrs. Paul's or, like, Gorton's fish sticks. I think it was Mrs. Paul's fish sticks growing up. And my mother, her idea of making it fancy - and I'm sure she saw this suggestion, this serving suggestion on, like, the back of the package with some partnership with Campbell, because it would take a can of Campbell's condensed tomato soup. And you would just heat up the condensed soup and ladle that over the fish sticks as the sauce.

MCGEE COLBERT: Oh, my God.

GROSS: Oh, no water? You're supposed to add a can of water.

COLBERT: No, no. No, that's if you're making soup, not if you're making a delicious remoulade.

GROSS: (Laughter).

MCGEE COLBERT: Imagine the salt content.

GROSS: Oh, God.

(LAUGHTER)

COLBERT: Exactly. Exactly. I'm a creature of pure sodium by the time I was 10.

(LAUGHTER)

COLBERT: But, you know, that also - this was the thing that even I, as a child who just would eat anything you'd put in front of me, spaghetti with ketchup.

MCGEE COLBERT: Oh, my God (laughter).

GROSS: Oh, I had that once at my aunt's house.

COLBERT: Oh, my God. We got that all the - my brothers and sisters loved it.

GROSS: Oh, that was horrible.

COLBERT: I'm like, I don't understand what's happening.

MCGEE COLBERT: Oh, my God.

COLBERT: But I would, of course, have to eat it.

GROSS: Evie, were you ever brought to tears anticipating something your mother would then serve for dinner?

MCGEE COLBERT: Frequently. Well, yeah, my parents - you know, everything was very local. So we had - I think a lot of Charlestonians love this - is shad roe, which is really hard to get. It's, you know, the roe of a shad fish. And I hated that.

COLBERT: And it would be steamed with vinegar.

MCGEE COLBERT: They would have that all the time, too.

COLBERT: Seasonally.

MCGEE COLBERT: Seasonally. Yeah, yeah.

GROSS: Stephen, you had appendicitis not too long ago.

MCGEE COLBERT: Yes, he did (laughter).

COLBERT: Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Not only did I have appendicitis, I was dumb enough to do two shows with a burst appendix.

GROSS: Two shows? I thought it was just one.

COLBERT: It was one night, but we did two shows that night.

GROSS: Oh, no.

COLBERT: Yeah.

MCGEE COLBERT: Yes, exactly...

COLBERT: That's how dumb I am.

MCGEE COLBERT: ...Oh, no. Oh, no.

GROSS: Did you have to change your diet after that? Because the recipes have some, you know, pretty rich food in it.

MCGEE COLBERT: He solved it by just having the appendix taken right away (laughter).

COLBERT: Yes, popped right out of my body. And, no, not really. I mean, I didn't really want to eat anything for a long time. It's a great - you know, appendicitis is the new Ozempic in my opinion.

MCGEE COLBERT: No, no, no.

GROSS: (Laughter).

MCGEE COLBERT: No, no, no.

COLBERT: Because I lost 17 pounds. I looked pretty hot there for a while.

(LAUGHTER)

COLBERT: Pale and hot. I looked like a vampire. I have tried, like, to be healthy over the years. Like, I was vegan for seven months. That was fine.

MCGEE COLBERT: (Laughter).

GROSS: Was that Jon Stewart's influence?

COLBERT: No, no, no. I lost a bet with someone, a friend of mine who's a vegan.

GROSS: Since I asked about appendicitis and you did two shows...

COLBERT: Yeah.

GROSS: Like, did you know what was wrong? Did you realize something really terrible was happening.

MCGEE COLBERT: Here we go. I'm so glad you asked this question.

COLBERT: My wife wasn't with me.

MCGEE COLBERT: No. I was in New Jersey, and he was at the theater. And I kept saying, you know, how are you feeling? Because I knew he wasn't feeling well. So I'd say, how's it going? And he wouldn't answer my calls.

COLBERT: Well, because I couldn't. I couldn't talk. I was in so much pain. I thought it was indigestion of just, like, the highest possible quality.

MCGEE COLBERT: (Laughter).

COLBERT: And but it felt like somebody was leaning on a broomstick and just jamming the end of the broomstick into my gut, and as the day went on, just leaned in a heavier way. And I just said to my assistant, I said, no one can talk to me. I'm just going to go to rehearsal, and that's the only time I'm going to talk today. And I had to do rehearsal essentially sitting down, and I rewrote the show afterwards lying down on a couch. And I would just hold up my thumb if I approved the joke or thumb down.

If I didn't approve the joke, then I would have to talk because I would have to say, this is how I want to rewrite it. We managed to get through rewriting two shows. But between acts of the show, I would burst into tears because I was in so much pain. And I never feel sick onstage. I always feel fine because the adrenaline kicks in and there's a relationship with the audience. And I've never had it affect me onstage. When I get off, you know, about a half an hour later, when the adrenaline's gone, it'll kick in.

But this was the first time ever I couldn't actually get through it onstage and, like, put it behind me. But I was committed. You know, I had Bradley Cooper on there for "Maestro," and I had Jose Andres on there and I had lots of other lovely people. And when I got through the show, when all the adrenaline was gone, I started to get a thing called the rigors, which is every muscle in your body goes into spasm.

COLBERT: which is from blood poisoning. And I just wanted to go to bed. And...

MCGEE COLBERT: Yeah, this is what he said to me, which is so funny to me.

COLBERT: She calls me and goes, you need to go to the hospital. And I said...

MCGEE COLBERT: I said, you need to go to the hospital. He said, no, I just want to go home and go to sleep. And I said, what do you think I can do for you? What do you think I could possibly...

GROSS: (Laughter).

MCGEE COLBERT: ...Do for you at home that would make you feel better?

COLBERT: No, nothing. I just need to go to bed. And I have a driver that I've had for many years, and you called...

MCGEE COLBERT: I did. Yeah, I bypassed Stephen completely and called Pablo and said, just - I'll meet you at the emergency room. Don't even tell him where you're going.

COLBERT: (Laughter).

MCGEE COLBERT: Just go to the emergency room. I'll meet you there. He's out of the picture now. He has no voice (laughter).

COLBERT: And thank God, because at home, we don't have morphine, but at the emergency room, they do.

MCGEE COLBERT: Yeah, shoutout to nurses. We had great...

COLBERT: Shoutout.

MCGEE COLBERT: ...Great nursing care. They were wonderful, really.

COLBERT: Yeah.

GROSS: Evie, you saved his life.

MCGEE COLBERT: Well (laughter)...

COLBERT: Yeah, kind of did.

MCGEE COLBERT: I mean, or Stephen was foolish enough to risk his life. We could look at it that way, too.

COLBERT: Yeah.

GROSS: We can look at it both ways.

MCGEE COLBERT: (Laughter).

COLBERT: Well, I didn't know that I was dying.

MCGEE COLBERT: No, I think you probably thought you had a kidney stone or something like that.

COLBERT: Yes, that was the level of pain. Yeah.

MCGEE COLBERT: But, you know, you raise children, or you just become a functioning adult. Sometimes, we know when one's supposed to go to the hospital (laughter).

COLBERT: And also, there's the old, you know, the show must go on.

GROSS: Yeah, but, but...

COLBERT: Because...

MCGEE COLBERT: Exactly, Terry - but, but, Stephen, but...

COLBERT: But think about that. If you say but, but, then the show will never go on. That's the wrong attitude.

MCGEE COLBERT: Yeah, but sometimes you're going to hurt the show by going on.

COLBERT: It was a pretty good show. There was two pretty good shows that night, I got to say.

MCGEE COLBERT: (Laughter).

COLBERT: If you look back, you won't know that I'm dying. And the thing is that the show must go on, to me, is not like, you know, there's someone over you with a whip saying, you must do the show. The show must go on is 'cause that's what you do. I've gone on and done shows under terrible conditions, and the show always makes it better. And that's why I went on, not because I felt an obligation to the CBS Corporation. It's 'cause that's what I...

MCGEE COLBERT: Which you do have, though. You...

COLBERT: I do have an obligation to the CBS Corporation...

MCGEE COLBERT: (Laughter).

COLBERT: ...And really Paramount and very soon David Ellison. Welcome aboard, David.

MCGEE COLBERT: (Laughter).

COLBERT: But I just - that's what makes me feel better. This is - I'm a performer. I - my default is to go on stage.

GROSS: Did you feel at some point that you were actually close to death? And medically, how close were you?

COLBERT: Well, they found out when they finally actually did the MRI - which was at 11, and we got the results at 1 or something like that - they knew it was my appendicitis, and they scheduled me for surgery the next day at 6 a.m. And they didn't think it had burst. But when they finally - when I finally came out of it, the first thing the doctor said was, boy, it was a mess in there.

MCGEE COLBERT: Yeah.

COLBERT: And...

MCGEE COLBERT: It had burst, and it was...

COLBERT: Yeah.

MCGEE COLBERT: And that led to the blood...

STEPHEN COLBERT AND TERRY GROSS: Blood poisoning.

MCGEE COLBERT: Yeah.

COLBERT: Yeah, sepsis. And it was bad.

MCGEE COLBERT: Yeah.

COLBERT: I don't know. I don't want to say, like, I was on death's door, but it was a sort of thing that if you don't treat, yes, that's - it's...

MCGEE COLBERT: Well, thank God for good medical care, right?

COLBERT: ...The worst will happen.

MCGEE COLBERT: Because we had - you know, we had...

COLBERT: Thank God.

MCGEE COLBERT: ...Great care, and we got you - we had to go every day for antibiotics for a long time.

COLBERT: Like, 21 days.

MCGEE COLBERT: Yeah.

COLBERT: It was so bad. I had, like, this neutron bomb drip to try to wipe it out 'cause it was in my bloodstream.

MCGEE COLBERT: Yeah.

COLBERT: And, again, can we get back to the morphine for a second?

MCGEE COLBERT: (Laughter).

GROSS: Sure.

COLBERT: Because I was so - I was in so - I was so shaking. I was in so much pain. Like, I could not communicate at all. Like, I couldn't speak 'cause my teeth were also chattering because of - the blood poisoning causes spasms all over your body. And I got that line in me.

MCGEE COLBERT: Oh, God. It was funny.

COLBERT: That morphine drip and that...

MCGEE COLBERT: She had been asking - the nurse had been asking all kinds of questions - you know, when was the last time you did this? What about this? And you were just like, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. And then she said, OK, we're going to give you a little morphine. You're like, really? OK, fine, if you think that's necessary, you know. And then not 30 seconds later, Stephen looks over to the nurse. He's like, hi. What's your story?

(LAUGHTER)

COLBERT: Listen. I think her name was Nancy (ph). I go, Nancy, what's your story?

(LAUGHTER)

MCGEE COLBERT: And Nancy looks at me. You know, you're - I'm afraid you're not the first person who's had morphine love for Nancy. And she looked at me with these laughing eyes. She's like, oh, I see. I think the morphine's acting. I think you're feeling better (laughter).

COLBERT: I'm like, what are you talking about? I'm just - I just wanted to know what Nancy's story is.

(LAUGHTER)

COLBERT: She seems like a nice person. So Nancy, are you from around here?

GROSS: Evie, were you ever worried that he was going to die?

MCGEE COLBERT: I don't think that he was going to die. I was worried that he could be sick for a very, very long time. You know, I was just worried that if it really turned into sepsis and - you know, that there could be catastrophic impacts of that. So I guess I was worried for a while there.

GROSS: Yeah.

MCGEE COLBERT: You learn...

COLBERT: I wasn't worried until later when I found out how bad it was.

MCGEE COLBERT: Well, a lot of things - like a lot of things that happen in life, you learn a lot on the fly, right? I didn't know much about that, but we have friends. We have - we had a lot of people I called and said, what do you think? What do you think? I got a lot of great advice. We got, as I said, wonderful medical care. And you sort of immediately learn how scary things can become so quickly, you know? I think we take our health for - I know I take my health for granted a lot. And, you know, we're all just one bad thing away from something happening, right?

COLBERT: Have a great show, everybody.

(LAUGHTER)

COLBERT: At any moment, Terry...

MCGEE COLBERT: Your appendix could burst.

COLBERT: ...You could be gone any second.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: All right. Let's take a short break here. If you're just joining us, my guests are Stephen Colbert and Evie McGee Colbert. They wrote a new book together called "Does This Taste Funny?: Recipes Our Family Loves." We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF THE BAD PLUS' "THE BEAUTIFUL ONES (INSTRUMENTAL)")

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to our interview with Stephen Colbert and Evie McGee Colbert. They're married. She makes regular appearances on "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert." They're partners in a production company. And now they've co-authored a new cookbook called "Does This Taste Funny?: Recipes Our Family Loves."

You grew up very close to each other, maybe a block away, I think you said.

COLBERT: One street away.

GROSS: Yeah.

COLBERT: One street away.

GROSS: But you didn't know each other...

COLBERT: No.

GROSS: ...Until you met, like, after you'd moved away from home, after...

COLBERT: That's right.

GROSS: ...Each of you had moved away from home. And you met at a music festival, the Spoleto Festival in Charleston in 1990. And Evie, you lived next door to a theater...

MCGEE COLBERT: Yeah.

GROSS: ...Where, I guess, some of the performances were at the music festival. And I guess, Stephen, you lived a block away. And both places became homes where the musicians hung out. Evie, your mother used to cook for the musicians a lot.

MCGEE COLBERT: That's right.

GROSS: But I'm wondering if being so close to a theater and meeting people who performed in the theater made you each feel like acting, show business was an attainable idea.

MCGEE COLBERT: Absolutely - absolutely for me. So we lived next door to the Dock Street Theatre in Charleston when I was a little girl. And I took acting classes all through my sort of middle school, high school years, and I did a lot of community theater. And I was already doing a lot of acting, but I'd never thought, ooh, I could maybe think about doing this until I met people who were professional actors at the Spoleto Festival. You know, it changed my perspective of what a life in the arts could be like, for sure.

COLBERT: And I hadn't done any acting and performing of any kind, really. And I secretly wanted to. And it sort of came from my mother, who had trained to be an actress. But my senior year, I finally auditioned for something, and I'd gotten a couple of plays at school. And the Spoleto Festival was bringing a play by Gian Carlo Menotti to Charleston called "The Leper." And there was a role for a teenage boy, and that boy had been cast out of New York, and he had dropped out for - last minute for reasons I don't know. And they called my choir director, Ben Hutto, at school and said, do you know anybody who might be right for this part? Send them over to audition. And he said, you should go over, and you did a good job in "Annie Get Your Gun" or whatever I'd done. You should go over there. And I auditioned for Maestro Menotti and these professionals from New York, and I got the job. And somebody in the company said, you're good. You could do this if you wanted to.

GROSS: Oh, wow. Yeah.

COLBERT: And I husbanded that knowledge...

GROSS: Yeah.

COLBERT: ...For the next two years 'cause then I went off to college, and I was a philosophy major for the next two years. And then two years in, I went, you know, I actually - I want to go do that. So that's why I transferred to Northwestern University's theater school. But it made a huge difference in my life besides the fact that my mother also, like, threw parties and that sort of thing, and I got to meet the artists and the actors and the dancers and the opera singers. And my mother and I used to be supernumeraries in the opera, where we would go in there and, like, dress up. I'd be a spear carrier for Antony and Cleopatra or something. And - but that exposure and just someone giving you any encouragement, that just little spark saying, you are good at something.

MCGEE COLBERT: I can remember being at a Spoleto performance, and Merce Cunningham came out on stage. I think John Cage had done the music, and Merce Cunningham was dancing, but he was really old at this point. And he stood center stage and sort of, like, moved his arm around. And people in the audience started booing. And I thought it was fantastic. I was like, not only do I find what he's doing interesting, but I love that the audience hates it...

(LAUGHTER)

MCGEE COLBERT: ...Because it was such an - it was - felt so guttural, you know? They were just like, no, I don't want you to do that. And this kind of interaction between an artist and the audience...

COLBERT: And he maintains his intention.

MCGEE COLBERT: He keeps going, and it was just - it was a really interesting example of art and just - react to it the way you want to react to it, you know?

GROSS: Yeah. Evie, are there things you had to sacrifice in your life when Stephen became famous and had this kind of consuming career and you had children?

MCGEE COLBERT: Wow. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I mean, I decided it was - listen. I think I'm incredibly lucky to have been able to be home with our children. But Stephen's hours were really long and difficult, and I felt that I just wanted to be home with them when I could. So I ended up spending a lot of my time as a stay-at-home mother, which I had never expected to do. And it was real privilege.

Yeah, I think there were sacrifices. I had trained to be an actress, and I decided not to be an actress even before we got married. But then later in life, I had opportunities to do some performing, which I chose frequently not to do 'cause it would take me out of town and I felt that our family needed somebody at home. I mean, I don't, in any way, want to suggest I ever felt cheated because it was such a privilege to be able to have the life I had. I feel incredibly lucky that I was with my children and that - I mean, even though Stephen had a busy job, he wasn't gone. He just came home late. So we were always together as a family. And that's - in show business, that's super-unusual, you know? So I think we've had an incredibly lucky time, frankly, very blessed.

COLBERT: I can't speak to your experience 'cause that's your experience, but certainly for the business that I'm in, this is one of the more normative jobs you can have 'cause you know where you're going, and you know when you're coming home. And the hours may be long, but at least you can plan your life.

MCGEE COLBERT: Right.

GROSS: And you're going to be home. I mean...

COLBERT: Yeah.

GROSS: You're not traveling to different locations.

COLBERT: I'm not in Sarajevo...

GROSS: Right, yeah, exactly.

COLBERT: ...Shooting "Game Of Thrones"...

GROSS: Right. Yeah.

COLBERT: ...Unless they want to cast me.

MCGEE COLBERT: (Laughter).

COLBERT: Then to hell with all of this TV stuff. I'm a star.

GROSS: To hell with the family.

COLBERT: Yeah.

MCGEE COLBERT: We had - I had someone say to me once, Terry, that I think is so funny. When - I guess you'd been doing "The Colbert Report" for a year or two, Stephen. And I was chairing a book fair in our kids' school, and there was an author who said that she wanted to meet me because I was Stephen's wife. And I remember saying to my friend, my life is just getting really weird. This is just weird. And she turned to me and said, the life you ordered has arrived. And I thought it was such a funny way, but it is true. It all comes as a package - right? - if you want to be a performer or if you want to be an artist. And with fame comes attention, comes opportunity but also comes sacrifice of some way.

GROSS: The thing is sometimes when you're married to somebody who's famous and is in the public eye and very recognizable, people want to meet the famous person and look right past the spouse.

MCGEE COLBERT: Yeah. Yeah.

GROSS: It's like spouse doesn't really exist.

MCGEE COLBERT: Oh, yeah.

COLBERT: That's a real thing.

MCGEE COLBERT: That's a real thing.

GROSS: And that's hard to deal with.

MCGEE COLBERT: Yeah. Yeah, it is hard to deal with it.

COLBERT: Except now it's Evie they want to meet.

GROSS: Well, that's the thing, Evie. Like, now you have...

COLBERT: Honest to God, people go, you're nice and everything, but I love her.

MCGEE COLBERT: Oh, that's funny (laughter).

GROSS: We need to take another sharp break here. So let me reintroduce you. If you're just joining us, my guests are Stephen Colbert and Evie McGee Colbert. They cowrote a new cookbook called "Does This Taste Funny? Recipes Our Family Loves." We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF CRAIG DAVIS' "BATTLE OF THE BALCONY JIVE (FEAT. JOHN CLAYTON AND JEFF HAMILTON)")

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to my interview with Stephen Colbert and Evie McGee Colbert. They're partners in their marriage as well as in their production company. And she makes regular appearances on his CBS show, "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert." During the COVID lockdown when he hosted "The Late Show" from their home, she was his partner on the show, acting as a producer, handling the sound and serving as an audience of one. Now they coauthored a new cookbook called "Does This Taste Funny?: Recipes Our Family Loves."

You're both from prominent families. Stephen, your father died when you were 10. But before that, he'd been a director of a program at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. And he worked at the National Institutes of Health. And then the family moved to South Carolina, and he became the first vice president for academic affairs at the Medical University of South Carolina. That was in 1969.

COLBERT: Yeah.

GROSS: And, Evie, your father was a prominent civil litigator. He served in the South Carolina House of Representatives for three terms. He was a Democrat. Because your fathers were prominent, were you expected to be model children?

COLBERT: Oh, that's interesting.

MCGEE COLBERT: Yeah.

COLBERT: I don't think because our - or I'll just speak for me. I don't think because of who my father was, was I expected to be a model child. I think the same - I mean, first of all, I think we were all - 11 children in the family. I think we were all held to the same standard. I think I had a slightly different relationship with my dad than my other brothers and sisters did because I was the last. They used to say I can't believe Dad took you to the carnival. Like, Dad hates carnivals. Or I can't believe Dad went to the beach with you or something like that. But my father had a sense that, you know, this is his last bite at the apple and - to do those fatherly things with me.

Because my father died when I was young, it's not so much I was held to a standard that I had to match him. It's that when your parent dies when you're young, they become Olympian, or there's something much larger than life, which of course is how a child sees their parent. But you never get to move beyond that. So as you get older, they also get larger. So as your view of the world or what you believe is asked of you to be an adult, at least for me, my father inflated ahead of me and became even grander in a way.

And so if there was any standard placed on me, it was placed on me by myself. My mother was not asking me to be a certain person because of who my father was. I did it to myself because of the person I perceived my father to be. And I actually don't think I'm very far off. I think he was an extraordinary man. But I think that's self-imposed on my part.

MCGEE COLBERT: Probably on mine, too, actually. I mean, I was lucky enough to have had my father for a long time. He just passed away this past April. And at his funeral, when I delivered the eulogy, I mentioned how as a little girl, I used to like to put my feet in my father's footprints on the sand. And I think metaphorically, that's how I felt about him. I admired my father so much that I always wanted to try to live up to be the person he was, and the same for my mother. I hit the jackpot with my parents. I really love them.

And I think for me, it wasn't being a model child. It was being a person who cared about the community that they lived in and gave of themselves and their time to make the world a better place in whatever way they could. And my parents were both selfless, community active. They did a lot in the town of Charleston.

COLBERT: And for me, because I wanted to know my father, even though I was robbed of that ability to move beyond the childhood view of him. Because I wanted to know him, I grabbed onto the little things that I did know about him. For instance, my father's idea of fun was to read philosophy. He really would enjoy sitting down with Jacques Maritain or Lambois (ph) or other French Christian humanists. And so that's what I read. I read a lot of books. I knew that he had lived a life of the mind, so that's what I wanted to do. It was important to be smart. My father was a dean, an assistant dean at Yale medical when he was 29. He was a full dean at 31 at St. Louis.

And so he was this academic superstar, which I never was. But he was this academic superstar and a deep thinker, and I aspired for that in hopes of knowing him. And often it was religiously based, you know? He was Jesuit-educated. And my mother and my father, both profoundly dedicated to their Catholic faith in different ways, my father more intellectually and my mother more sort of mystically in a way - though she also read a great deal, but more Dorothy Day. And I think I was most influenced by the little bit I knew that I used as a thread to pull on to try to understand him.

GROSS: How do you think TV has changed since you started working on "The Daily Show"? What year was that?

COLBERT: I think it was spring of '97. So what is that? Twenty-seven, 28 years. Wow.

GROSS: And TV is a completely different - if you count streaming, it's a completely different place than it was.

MCGEE COLBERT: Yeah.

COLBERT: Yes.

GROSS: And, you know, networks are losing viewers. Streamers are losing viewers. YouTube is gaining viewers. So it's a whole different world. And how has that affected you and your career?

COLBERT: Well, what I do is a little odd. And the shows that I've been involved in are a little odd. They're a little bit outside of the normal title shifts of the rest of the industry, I think. People often say, like, oh, do you have a lot of famous friends? Like, no, because I've kind of worked at the same place. You really become friends with other people when you do a whole bunch of different projects. But over the last 25 years, I've done three projects, essentially. I've worked on "The Daily Show." I've done "The Colbert Report" and I've done "The Late Show."

And there have been a few side things, but those have been my career over the last 25 years, which is a pretty long time to be working essentially without a break. And those kind of shows still flourish, generally speaking, relative to the rest of the industry, live same day. And I'm not saying viewership hasn't gone down for TV, but things like sports, news and late night shows, which are kind of dependent upon watching it that day because they're like unrefrigerated shrimp. They're no good tomorrow.

(LAUGHTER)

COLBERT: So they still have, like, a - what is it called? Like, an appointment audience on a daily basis. So what I do right now, "The Late Show," and you and I have never - I don't think we've ever spoken about "The Late Show," Terry. But one of the things that I discovered when I did it...

GROSS: That is definitely not true (laughter).

COLBERT: Oh.

GROSS: Yeah, but - yeah.

COLBERT: Have we spoken in the last 10 years?

GROSS: You're kidding me, right?

COLBERT: Well, here's the thing, Terry. I miss you so much....

GROSS: Oh.

COLBERT: ...That it feels like...

(LAUGHTER)

COLBERT: Even a day feels like 10 years. I apologize. I feel terrible. I don't know why I felt that way.

GROSS: Do I know you?

COLBERT: I don't know.

(LAUGHTER)

COLBERT: Oh, I'm sorry. That's my brain these days.

MCGEE COLBERT: But this is my first time.

COLBERT: It is. That's why.

GROSS: Yeah.

COLBERT: No, but I - please accept my apology. But what - I guess the reason why is - I don't think we ever discussed this part of it, which is when I took this job, I originally thought, oh, I want to do this different than anyone's ever done it before, the same way that when I did "The Colbert Report," I wanted to do something nobody had done before. And besides trying to find your feet when you're first starting a show like that, I eventually realized, oh, I actually like the form that preexists, and I just have to fill it with my wine. You know, it's an old bottle. I just have to fill it with my wine. And that is - to answer your question, I live in such an old medium, in such an old stadium, which is CBS, in an old theater, which is "The Ed Sulivan." And I'm doing a form that has still got - and literally an old audience but also an audience that is coming for an old reason, which is, this thing happened today and we're making jokes about it.

So, yeah, TV has changed enormously, and I think that it's highly likely that cable will go away completely because streaming now fills that position. If you want something specific, you don't need to go to A&E or Comedy Central or BET. Like, all of that exists in a very siloed and very specific way in various apps. So I think there's going to be an enormous change, which has been coming slowly, and I think it'll come quite rapidly. You see how NBC or Comcast has decided to sell off all their cable assets. I think that's a harbinger of what's to come. But strangely, CBS is doing really well. Like, the network is doing really well. So while I perceive it in the landscape, oddly, there's a little bit of dry land left. Even though the audience isn't what it was for, like, Johnny Carson, there's an odd stability in our little pocket of the business.

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guests are Stephen Colbert and Evie McGee Colbert. They wrote a new book together called "Does This Taste Funny?: Recipes Our Family Loves." We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONNY ROLLINS' "TOOT, TOOT, TOOTSIE, GOODBYE")

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to our interview with Stephen Colbert and Evie McGee Colbert. They're married. She makes regular appearances on "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert." And now they've co-authored a new cookbook called "Does This Taste Funny?: Recipes Our Family Loves."

Stephen, I've known about your deep faith and Catholicism since "The Daily Show" when you were kind of, like, the religion correspondent, and you had a regular feature called This Week in God.

COLBERT: This is - God Machine (imitating machinery beeping).

GROSS: Yeah. Yes. And, you know, you still, you know, talk about religion on "The Late Show." And you satirize religion. You satirize Catholicism. You satirize the pope. So I was really surprised when the pope invited you...

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: ...To the Vatican as part of a larger event. And I don't remember what the event was, but Jim Gaffigan was there. I think David Sedaris was there.

COLBERT: Sure. Conan was there. Jimmy Fallon was there.

GROSS: Yeah.

COLBERT: Chris Rock was there. Yeah.

GROSS: What was this about?

COLBERT: Well, first, if I could just back up just slightly here, I'm willing to talk about my own faith if my guest asks me about it. I don't like to proselytize. And I'll make any jokes about the Catholic Church. You know, I don't - they deserve a lot of them. And I am deeply Catholic in that it is combed into my being, but I don't know how deeply devout I am. I know people who are really deeply devout, and I wouldn't want to put myself in their league. I just am integrally Catholic, if you know what I mean. And I do love my church, and I still go to church, and I do have a faith. I just don't want to confuse myself with someone who is a very devoted Catholic - a devout, I mean. But I have become friends with Father Jim Martin over the years, who's sort of, like, the Broadway priest in New York. And he's the editor of America Magazine, and he was the chaplain of "The Colbert Report" on the old show.

GROSS: I remember.

COLBERT: And, you know, we've become dear friends over the years. And he just wrote me one day - I actually got the email right before I went on stage at "The Late Show" one night - saying, hey, the Vatican has asked me to put together a list of, like, 20 comedians 'cause the pope wants to meet some - meet with some comedians. Would you mind helping with that? And I was like, yeah, sure. So I put a list together of 40 comedians. They sent me back a list of 15 or 20, something like that. Like, they'd made their selects of my selects and with a few of their own. And Jim Gaffigan and I called everybody on the list, and we said, hey, we don't really know what this is about, but the pope wants to meet comedians 'cause he thinks that comedians do something valuable in society, and he just wants to meet us. Now, I thought were going to go to Rome and, like, hang with the pope. I don't know why I thought that.

(LAUGHTER)

COLBERT: I thought that maybe we'd, like, sit there and we'd have coffee or tea with the pope.

GROSS: (Laughter).

COLBERT: And he would ask us some questions. Then we would get a photo and leave. It turns out that these were comedians from all over the world. It was, like, from 60 countries. And the pope had a meeting in the Apostolic Palace with us. There was - I think altogether, it was, like, 110 comedians. And we all didn't know what was going on. And we all sat there, and the pope came in, and he gave a beautiful speech about comedy that we did not understand at all but we read later. That was about how...

GROSS: 'Cause it was in Italian?

COLBERT: It was in solamente italiano. And it was about how comedy, I think, eases people's day, and it is, like, the social lubricant. And it's OK to make fun of God and the church and the pope and all that kind of stuff as long as, like, you do it with a smile and there's some intention to make people feel better. And what struck me was...

GROSS: That's, like, your philosophy.

COLBERT: Yeah, I would like to think so. And I - what struck me is that we're in this room, which is about the size of the Sistine Chapel. And it's actually just down the hall from the Sistine Chapel. And it's more rococo than it is, you know, late Renaissance. But it's beautiful.

COLBERT: But it's beautiful. It's like you're in another Sistine Chapel. And we're all sitting there in our, you know, Sunday best, as it were, waiting for the pope to come in. But comedians are all iconoclasts. We're all people who have a pretty jaundiced view of authority. And I know that some of the people there weren't Catholic or weren't meaningfully Catholic, at least easily by their own description anymore. And the minute the pope came in, we all leapt to our feet. Like, the iconoclasm went out the door. We all just leapt to our feet and started applauding and, like, screaming. I thought, wow. That's the effect the pope has on 110 comedians. Like, it was almost like an autonomic response because you've spent all this - it's, like, the location. It's the red shoes. It's the white outfit. It's all the - it's all, like, the guys with the sashes around you, the pope's gentlemen who all look like butlers and everything. We were all - I was sort of shocked that we all kind of gave into it immediately.

GROSS: Did you get to meet the pope one on one?

COLBERT: I did. I did. I memorized something in Italian. I went up, and I said, you know, sancte padre, you know, Holy Father, my name is Stephen Colbert, and I am the reciting - I'm the voce recitante. I'm the reciting voice for your memoir, "Life," 'cause he had released a memoir of his life in the spring. And I had gotten a call from my manager to say, baby doll, you're not gonna believe who wants you to do their audiobook. And I'm like, who? And he goes, just guess. I'm like, I don't know - Barbra Streisand. No. And he goes, the [expletive] pope.

(LAUGHTER)

COLBERT: And I go, does it pay? He goes, you better believe. So anyway - so he negotiates with the Vatican for my contract. And I read the pope - so I just said, I read your book. You know, thanks so much. I was reciting voice for your book. And he said, ah, and, like, kind of used his hand to guide me to the side. So that was it. That's all I got. It wasn't that - it was very nice. And he gave me he gave me a rosary. We all got rosaries blessed by the pope.

GROSS: Evie, did you grow up Catholic, and was your family religious?

MCGEE COLBERT: I grew up Presbyterian. And we were religious but decidedly not Catholic.

COLBERT: Exactly. One of the hallmarks of Presbyterian is, we are not Catholic.

MCGEE COLBERT: We are not Catholic. You know, my family - I think it's a Protestant thing, maybe. We - church was an event, right? We had to all get dressed up every Sunday, and it was a social event and all of that. And as I got older, I sort of moved away from that aspect of my faith, you know? But I still consider my faith a very strong part of my life. And we raised our children in the Catholic Church. So I've been going to the Catholic Church since we've been married. But I never have become Catholic. So I'm still Presbyterian.

GROSS: Did it matter to either of you that you were both of, you know, the Christian faith but of different denominations?

COLBERT: Well, I will miss Evie in heaven.

MCGEE COLBERT: (Laughter) I was nervous about Steven's mother because of all 11 children, I'm the only spouse who did not convert to Catholicism. But you're the baby, and I think she didn't - she let you go.

COLBERT: Well, I didn't ask you to.

MCGEE COLBERT: You didn't ask me to.

COLBERT: I didn't ask you to.

MCGEE COLBERT: Yeah.

COLBERT: And I remember when I told my mom I was going to ask Evie to marry me. I had told my mom the night before that I was going to ask Evie to marry me the next day, and I said, and I'm not going to ask her to convert. And she looked at me for a while, and she goes, I think your dad would be OK with that, which was a big thing for her to say.

MCGEE COLBERT: Yeah.

COLBERT: And it - you know, the - I love my church, and I love Evie's church, too. There - our priest in Chicago, a guy named Father Jack Wall, is a wonderful priest in Chicago. He used to be at Old St. Pats. I don't know where Wall is now. But he said, you know, you're going to have to be a Presby-Catholic (ph), and you're going to have to become a Catholi-terian (ph).

MCGEE COLBERT: Right.

COLBERT: And I have, you know? I've - you know, I read Protestant theologians as well.

MCGEE COLBERT: Right.

COLBERT: And all I care is that our children have a relationship that feeds them in ways that my ancestors gave me.

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guests are Stephen Colbert and Evie McGee Colbert. They wrote a new book together called "Does This Taste Funny? Recipes Our Family Loves." We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MALACHI THOMPSON SONG, "BLUES FOR A SAINT CALLED LOUIS")

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to our interview with Stephen Colbert and Evie McGee Colbert. They're married. She makes regular appearances on "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert." They're partners in a production company. And now they've co-authored a new cookbook called "Does This Taste Funny? Recipes Our Family Loves."

I'd like you each to leave us with your favorite comfort food.

COLBERT: Well, most of the book is comfort food.

MCGEE COLBERT: It is.

(LAUGHTER)

COLBERT: A lot of butter.

MCGEE COLBERT: Yeah. Oh, I don't know. I mean, my favorite recipe in the book is the one that we start with, my mother's cheese biscuits, because there were things that she made always. And so now when I make them, I feel like she's with me, and it makes - it's comforting. And I love them. They're wonderful to give, and they're delicious and fattening (laughter). I think comfort food should be fattening (laughter).

COLBERT: I got so many in there. It's probably the red rice. You know, growing up on the coast of South Carolina, just anywhere in the South, there's so much red rice. And it has its roots in jollof rice of West Africa. But it's it's super-jammy and a little spicy and salty. And I had it almost every day growing up at Stiles Point Elementary School on Mikell Drive on James Island, South Carolina, which is still there. And there were just barrels of it being cooked every day by those lunch ladies. And I never got tired of it. And for - right before this book, I actually found a way to make it based on an Allison Roman recipe that - I said, ooh, that sauce she's making for the pasta actually has the flavor I remember as a child from this red rice. And I tried it, and it worked. And that was - that discovery of being able to get that flavor back from my childhood - those carefree years is what that rice gives me.

GROSS: When you say care-free years, do you mean before your father died?

COLBERT: Yes. Yes.

GROSS: Yeah. Yeah, taste is powerful.

MCGEE COLBERT: It's true. I mean...

GROSS: Smell is powerful.

MCGEE COLBERT: Yeah. I think we both enjoyed that rediscovery of recipes that we'd grown up with, which we - you know, we maybe had, you know, made them in our adulthood, but not really spent time with them the way we spent time with them writing this book.

COLBERT: And that's what COVID did. We were back there in Charleston on that island with our families, with the people who had taught us to make these and made these for us as - when we were children, and with those ingredients from that field and that creek. And it was a terrible time that had in it this gift to us, for us to slow down, go home and remember.

GROSS: And also working - it sounds like working together so closely on the show worked out OK.

COLBERT: Which we had been so afraid to do, or at least I had been afraid to do, because I was so nervous the first time Evie was on that she wouldn't have a good time. It's actually made it to air, her going, oh, my gosh, like, you're trembling. I'm like, I'm afraid this is going to be a bad experience for you 'cause I didn't - 'cause I'm bossy.

MCGEE COLBERT: No, no. No. But we have had fun. You know, and this whole process has been a lot of fun.

COLBERT: And an enormous amount of work, and I just could not be more - I could not have more admiration for the people who do this for a living because we had no idea what a huge undertaking it is to do one of these books.

MCGEE COLBERT: A lot of detail in a cookbook.

COLBERT: Oh, my God, three years to do this.

MCGEE COLBERT: You have to be right about whether it's a teaspoon or a tablespoon.

COLBERT: You really do. It makes a difference.

(LAUGHTER)

COLBERT: It makes a difference.

GROSS: Were your recipes fact-checked?

MCGEE COLBERT: Yes, by a lot of people.

COLBERT: Six ways to Sunday. It went through us - we'd make it many times - and then through our niece Lucy...

MCGEE COLBERT: Our niece Lucy would do...

COLBERT: ...Who would do it.

MCGEE COLBERT: ...Was fabulous.

COLBERT: And then it...

MCGEE COLBERT: She helped - tested everything.

COLBERT: And then all of that would go on to Chris Styler, who is a professional test kitchen, essentially. And he would say, is this what it's supposed to look and taste like? And we'd go, no. And then he would say, then you need to rewrite this recipe.

GROSS: (Laughter).

MCGEE COLBERT: And, you know, sometimes there were mistakes that, you know, we only caught at the last minute. I think it was last Thanksgiving, Stephen, I asked one of our children to make one of the pies in the cookbook.

COLBERT: Well, they had to make everything because I had a ruptured appendix.

MCGEE COLBERT: Oh, that's right. We were in the hospital. That's right. So the kids saved Thanksgiving last year completely. They made everything. But the - one of this - this pie recipe that was my mother's recipe for a chocolate pecan pie came out wrong. And I looked at it, and I was like, that's - why? That's too much flour. And they said, well, we used the recipe that you gave us, which I had just sent them and that had too much flour, and...

COLBERT: Three times too much flour.

MCGEE COLBERT: ...We had to go back and change it.

COLBERT: We had to go through and read every recipe again.

MCGEE COLBERT: Yeah, it was scary. We thought, what else could have gotten wrong? So we had to go back and look at everything again.

GROSS: You know, I hadn't thought about this, that, Stephen, you were trying to recover from appendicitis and not having any appetite, not really wanting to eat. But still, you had to, like, probably reread the recipes and...

MCGEE COLBERT: Yes.

COLBERT: Sure. Yes.

GROSS: ...Read memories of food...

MCGEE COLBERT: Yes.

GROSS: ...And how delicious food is.

MCGEE COLBERT: (Laughter).

COLBERT: Yes.

GROSS: And meanwhile, you have no appetite.

COLBERT: Yes.

MCGEE COLBERT: It's true.

COLBERT: Yeah. Yeah.

MCGEE COLBERT: We managed (laughter).

GROSS: Well, the book definitely survived that. It's very entertaining. I don't cook fancy things or ambitious things, but I enjoyed seeing the recipes. I enjoyed all the anecdotes, so I'm so glad we got to talk. Thank you.

MCGEE COLBERT: Oh, this has been lovely.

COLBERT: I'm so glad to talk to you after 10 years.

GROSS: (Laughter).

MCGEE COLBERT: I remember - Stephen, I don't know what...

COLBERT: I don't know where that comes from. I love talking to you so much that I guess I felt like I've been denied or something like that.

MCGEE COLBERT: I remember the first time I was listening, when you and Terry had your first conversation, and when you came to this point of the interview, Stephen said, Terry, I've been thinking so long about how I would say thank you.

GROSS: Oh, I remember that.

(LAUGHTER)

COLBERT: Or, like, this has been so wonderful. I really enjoyed it.

MCGEE COLBERT: Exactly.

COLBERT: Thank you so much.

MCGEE COLBERT: So I feel like that myself right now. Thank you so much, Terry. This has been such a wonderful experience.

GROSS: Stephen Colbert and Evie McGee Colbert have a new book called "Does This Taste Funny?: Recipes Our Family Loves." If you're a fan of late-night with Stephen Colbert, check out our interview with his former band leader and music director, Jon Batiste, who joined us at the piano earlier this week. You'll find that on our podcast, along with this week's interview with actress Danielle Deadwyler and lots of other FRESH AIR interviews. To find out what's happening behind the scenes of our show and get our producers' recommendations for what to watch, read and listen to, subscribe to our free newsletter at whyy.org/freshair.

(SOUNDBITE OF WYNTON MARSALIS' "SANTA CLAUSE IS COMING TO TOWN")

GROSS: FRESH AIR'S executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Roberta Shorrock, Ann Marie Baldonado, Sam Briger, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Susan Nyakundi and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Thea Chaloner directed today's show. Our co-host is Tonya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.

(SOUNDBITE OF WYNTON MARSALIS' "SANTA CLAUSE IS COMING TO TOWN")

Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.