Stephen Colbert celebrates his "beautiful crowd" in his Late Show return to the Ed Sullivan Theater after 15 months

The Hollywood Reporter

“So how you been? It’s great to be back," Colbert said as A Late Show transformed back into The Late Show after 460 days with a fully vaccinated Ed Sullivan Theater audience. "We never really left. But we certainly weren’t here. This is a slightly different energy than the converted storage room eight floors above us, as lovely as that was." Colbert compared his return to a full audience to the nervous feeling of the first day of school, and joked there were now a “Remember how to applaud” signs for the audience. “I don’t know if I even remember how to pander to the most beautiful crowd in the world,” Colbert said, adding: “If you remember me for one thing this year, let it be bringing back the Late Show’s audience. That’s it." Colbert's first Late Show back in front of an audience also included talking pants, his wife Evelyn McGee-Colbert on stage, Dana Carvey's dead-on President Biden impression and his first guest Jon Stewart. “There’s nothing I wanted to do more than breathe everyone’s air,” Stewart joked.