Stephen Colbert Once Laughed So Hard at ‘Tropic Thunder’ His Wife Thought He Was Dying

Watch most comedians long enough and you’ll start to hear the same stories. But watch Stephen Colbert long enough and you’ll always find he has a new reason for audiences to fall in love with his wife, Evie.

On Sunday, April 21 at The Dolby Theater in Los Angeles, California, “The Late Show” host and Ben Schwartz closed out PaleyFest LA 2024 with a wide-ranging and goofy Q&A that included Colbert retelling some of his career-best stories while gently negging his interviewer’s questioning style.

More from IndieWire

• Andy Garcia Lent Bridget Fonda His Jacket for 'The Godfather Part III' Nude Scene

• 'The Jinx' Director Felt He Was in Danger While Robert Durst Was on the Run

“I will tell you a question I have been asked before,” Colbert quipped, turning Schwartz’ first prompt back on the actor in a good nature. “It’s ‘What’s a question you haven’t been asked before?'”

“And OK, we’re going to the next question, you guys!,” Schwartz said with a laugh.

Always well-paired for these kinds of media events, the improv veterans talked comedy shop and mimed the big move from “Dirty Dancing” among other antics. They capped off their chat with a discussion of the moments that have made Colbert laugh the hardest from throughout his time in Hollywood as the farcical centerpiece on “The Colbert Report” and now eight seasons as CBS’s leading man in late night.

Making full use of the stage (with Schwartz’s back to the audience for ease of presentation) Colbert regaled a packed theater — more than eight times the size of his beloved Ed Sullivan back in New York — about the time ABC paid $15,000 to drop a horse out of a plane for “The Dana Carvey Show.” Diehard fans will know the actor first told that story on “Conan” in 2017; you can watch that telling on YouTube right now. But Colbert gave two answers and the other was a story about, you guessed it, Evie.

Describing traveling with his family for the holidays, “The Late Show” host recalled a time he found a film he was watching on a flight so funny that his wife nearly made their kids call for medical attention.

“We were flying to London for Thanksgiving or something like that one year and Evie and my daughter were sitting in front of me,” Colbert said. “Evie turned around to the kids and was saying, ‘Check on your father! Something seems too busy! I think there’s something wrong with him!’ because I was watching ‘Tropic Thunder,’ which I’d never seen.”

Reacting to one of the final scenes in director Ben Stiller’s legendary satire about the action genre from 2008, Colbert said he made a wheezing sound watching Tugg Speedman (Stiller) get rescued by Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr. in a controversial role he doesn’t regret). Evie confused that “busy” sound, Colbert said, for some sort of medical attack.

“It’s so dumb,” Colbert noted not of his wife’s adorable concern, but of the meta moment that made him lose it at 40,000 feet. “It’s where they come in at the end and [Tugg] goes, ‘This is my son. He’s called Twigman…’ because he’s built a little boy out twigs. And [Kirk] is like, ‘Tugg, we got to get you out of here.’ And they’re trying to drop character, but they’re too deep. It’s making fun of actors because they’re too deep in character and they can’t get out of character and they have to get out of character before they can escape this drug den.”

The scene sees Downey removing various costume pieces (a wig, for example) and transitioning through a set of increasingly funny caricatures. Still, it’s the button reveal at the end about the fictional in-universe film “Moon Shot” that caused Colbert to scare his wife with a suffocating sound.

“He’s transporting from one character to another. And he’s like, ‘You are right. I’m not Sergeant Lincoln Osiris.’ Then [with an accent] he goes, ‘Nor am I Father O’Malley.’ Like these are all Oscar-winning roles that he’s done. Then, he takes off his goatee and he goes,” Colbert said in a raspy voice, “‘Nor am I Neil Armstrong!'”

“And I went, ‘Oh, fuck! He played Neil Armstrong as a pirate?!,’” he said with a laugh. “The backstory you saw in that! And then I started choking. I couldn’t breathe.”

Best of IndieWire

• The Best LGBTQ Movies and TV Shows Streaming on Netflix Right Now

• Guillermo del Toro's Favorite Movies: 54 Films the Director Wants You to See

• Nicolas Winding Refn's Favorite Films: 37 Movies the Director Wants You to See

Sign up for Indiewire's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.