PLAYBOY INTERVIEW: STEPHEN COLBERT:
COLBERT: ...But I have an opportunity as this character to do things. I have an opportunity to do things that lead to discovery.
PLAYBOY: For you or the audience?
COLBERT: For me and the audience. If you just talk about it, everyone sits on their hands and the reality of it just watches as you talk about it. But by putting yourself in it, reality has to respond to your actions. I don’t pretend that the camera doesn’t change things. But it’s a version of reality that allows us to show what normally doesn’t get seen.
PLAYBOY: How much money did you ultimately raise for your super PAC?
COLBERT: About $1.4 million. We’ve got somewhere between $850,000 and $900,000 left. We’ve spent about half a million dollars of it so far. Because running for president—or not running for president, whatever it was we did—is expensive. But I can spend it on anything I want. I could use my super PAC money to buy a private jet, and I have to justify it to no one. I wouldn’t have known that unless I had my own super PAC. That’s the great thing about throwing yourself into the story. You find out things you wouldn’t have known otherwise.