11 Things You Didn't Know About Stephen Colbert
2. He Wrote For The Dana Carvey Show With Steve Carell & Louis C.K.
One of Colbert's first major jobs in comedy was as a writer and performer on The Dana Carvey Show. The team behind this show was absolutely phenomenal and included Dana Carvey, Steve Carell, Dino Stamatopoulos, Charlie Kaufman, and Louis C.K, so it was a shame when it was cancelled after just seven episodes due to low ratings.
Colbert has described the experience of working on the sketch series as being incredible, but the show itself was a complete disaster. As he explained, it came on right after the family friendly Home Improvement with a sketch where Carvey plays Bill Clinton breastfeeding puppies. About 10 million people immediately changed the channel, and they were never able to win those people back.
In fact, the day after the pilot episode premiered, Dana Carvey walked into Carell and Colbert's office and said, "I'm sorry I've ruined your career." Luckily, Colbert was able to head over to Saturday Night Live after that with fellow Carvey Show writer Robert Smigel, who he worked with on The Ambiguously Gay Duo. It might have been a ratings disaster, but Colbert was able to recover from The Dana Carvey Show's failure, and at least audiences got the amazing Waiters Who Are Nauseated By Food sketch out of it.