11 Things You Didn't Know About Stephen Colbert
10. He Studied To Be A Dramatic Actor
Stephen Colbert is one of the most brilliant comedians in modern times, pulling off one of the great feats of satire with The Colbert Report, but when he was first starting off, he wasn't even interested in comedy at all. While studying theater at Northwestern University, Colbert mainly performed in experimental dramatic plays and didn't partake in comedy whatsoever.
He frequented the Annoyance Theatre in Chicago, and Colbert once said that the Annoyance people looked down on Second City, the improv enterprise he would later join. "They thought it wasn't pure improv," he said. "There was a slightly snobby, mystical quality to the Annoyance people." In need of a job after graduation, Colbert ended up working the box office at Second City, and when he discovered employees could take free classes, he started getting into improvisational comedy. The rest was history.
It's hard to imagine an unfunny Stephen Colbert, but actually, many of his longtime costars have said he initially came off as sort of a pretentious intellectual when they first met him. Considering he'd go on to play out of touch, idiot characters, that's a hilarious image.