{"id":124302,"date":"2025-11-09T16:53:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-09T16:53:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/124302\/"},"modified":"2025-11-09T16:53:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-09T16:53:08","slug":"stephen-colbert-reflects-on-strangers-with-candy-for-25th-anniversary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/124302\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Colbert Reflects on Strangers With Candy for 25th Anniversary"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tStephen Colbert<\/a> revealed why he tends to play \u201cpoorly informed\u201d characters, including his Strangers With Candy character Charles \u201cChuck\u201d Noblet, while celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Comedy Central series\u2019 cancellation during the New York Comedy Festival<\/a> on Saturday.<\/p>\n

\n\tDuring a Q&A at the event, the cast was asked what their characters say about their shadow selves. \u201cMy shadow self is very much like Noblet in that, like, very self serious, doesn\u2019t want anyone to know how frightened he is all the time; is willing to shut down anyone in order to win an argument,\u201d he said of the high school history teacher. \u201cThose are the things that my entire life I\u2019ve had to battle against.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tColbert went on to admit that his \u201ccharacter on The Colbert Report <\/a>was very related\u201d to Noblet and \u201cthey had a lot of similarities,\u201d including being a \u201chigh status, poorly informed idiot.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile Noblet was a high-strung teacher, the comedian\u2019s fictionalized persona on The Colbert Report was a conservative pundit that was always up for a debate. Colbert was then asked why he tends to play characters with similar personality flaws, and he admitted it was \u201cto name it so I don\u2019t become that person.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI love really weak characters,\u201d he said of Noblet earlier in the night. \u201cHe\u2019s very buttoned up, very high-status. Very weak, very afraid. Totally unexamined. That\u2019s what I loved about him, is that he would never push the lens on himself.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tStrangers With Candy premiered on Comedy Central in 1999 and was a spoof of the after-school specials of the 1970s and \u201980s. The show followed 46-year-old Geraldine \u201cJerri\u201d Antonia Blank (Amy Sedaris<\/a>), who was a former drug addict returning to high school as a freshman. Throughout the series, Jerri acted as a guide of things not to do as a student at the school. In addition to Colbert\u2019s role of Noblet, Paul Dinello starred as art teacher Geoffrey Jellineck. Colbert,\u00a0Dinello and Sedaris created the series alongside Mitch Rouse, while the three stars also wrote the episodes.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe event, which was moderated by Kate McKinnon, paid tribute to the show\u2019s cancellation 25 years after the third and final season aired in 2000. The cast recalled they were never notified that the show was officially cancelled, and they briefly picked up the story in the 2005 movie Strangers With Candy.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe never got the final word,\u201d Colbert said about the show\u2019s cancellation, sharing that a TV upfront took place in the spring of 2000 in which Comedy Central revealed Strangers With Candy wasn\u2019t \u201con the schedule.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tColbert explained they asked for the network to confirm the show was canceled so they could write a final episode, though they were told \u201cno decision has been made\u201d about the fate of the show. \u201cNo one ever said, \u2018You\u2019re canceled.\u2019 They just stopped sending the checks,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\n\tDinello quipped that \u201cthey stopped re-filling our snack drawer\u201d on set, and Sedaris jokingly added it was \u201cbone dry.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAnother topic the group discussed was their eagerness to tell outlandish storylines that would leave viewers in shock. Early on in the conversation, McKinnon introduced a clip from a season one episode titled \u201cDreams on the Rocks.\u201d Colbert then explained that in the episode, Jellineck was putting on a school production of A Raisin in the Sun in which \u201call the characters are cast by white students and the Black students are playing the refrigerator, the tree.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe shot that, cut it; before we could get it on the air, a school in Maine put on an all-white Raisin in the Sun,\u201d he said about the play, which depicts a Black family\u2019s experience in Chicago.<\/p>\n

\n\tDespite their attempts to come up with outrageous storylines, Colbert said many plots they wrote often ended up happening in real life. He added, \u201cIt happened multiple times on the show that we couldn\u2019t think of anything wrong enough to do [that] the world didn\u2019t beat us to the punch.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stephen Colbert revealed why he tends to play \u201cpoorly informed\u201d characters, including his Strangers With Candy character Charles…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":124303,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[78621,146,2323,85,46,6676],"class_list":["post-124302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-amy-sedaris","tag-entertainment","tag-events","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-stephen-colbert"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124302\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}