It was David Letterman’s turn to be in the “Late Show” hot seat.
The iconic talk show host, 76, sat down for a discussion with current emcee Stephen Colbert at Manhattan’s Ed Sullivan Theater on Monday.
Letterman’s appearance as a guest on Colbert’s show was his first since he departed the “Late Show” in 2015 after a 22-year run.
The two men just spent the segment happily chatting, with Colbert, 59, asking if Letterman longs to be back on his “Late Show” stage.
“I miss everything,” the comedian confessed.
“Mostly it’s fun. Very few things in life provide one the opportunity — and I can’t speak for you or to you on this topic — But for me, if you muck one up, 24 hours later you get to try again,” he added.
The “Late Night” host went on: “And that’s a pretty good device.”
He continued: “Then when you do something you’re really proud of, you think ‘My god, let’s do that again!’ And six or seven years later you have that experience once more.”
At the conclusion of the interview, Letterman asked Colbert if he could a take photo behind the infamous desk.
Without hesitation, the “Colbert Report” funnyman made way for the Indiana native to take his rightful place.
“This is very generous of you. Thank you, Stephen,” Letterman quipped. “By the way, in my day, I never would’ve let this happen. I’m sorry. Thank you.”
Then Colbert inquired: “I’ve got a question for you. Again, very few people know what it’s like to host. What do you think about my supplies [behind the desk]? Anything like what you had?”
“What, all this weed?” Letterman joked, as Colbert burst out into laughter.
Letterman has been in the late-night talk show game for more than four decades, debuting “Late Night with David Letterman” on NBC in 1982.
He began hosting the “Late Show with David Letterman” on CBS in 1993 and stepped down in May 2015.
“I thought I would have some trouble, some emotional trouble, or some feeling of displacement, but I realized, hey, that’s not my problem anymore. And I have felt much better,” he said of retirement to Montana publication Whitefish Review in 2015. “It’s something for younger men and women to take on. So I haven’t missed it, the way I thought I might. And I do little things here and there to sort of keep me up and moving.”
“You believe that what you are doing is of great importance and that it is affecting mankind wall-to-wall. And then when you get out of it you realize, oh, well, that wasn’t true at all,” he continued. “It was just silliness. And when that occurred to me, I felt so much better and I realized, geez, I don’t think I care that much about television anymore. I feel foolish for having been misguided by my own ego for so many years.”
Retiring helped him spend more time with his then-12-year-old son, Harry, too.
“Because of my son I do things I would have done when I was 12, to show him — look, you can do this,” he told the outlet. “You have to grow up to have some wisdom, but I think part of that is letting your kids know that there’s some pretty silly stuff that you can get away with that is going to enhance your life.”
He added: “I know I’ve grown old. But I don’t think I’ve grown up. I think I have achieved a certain level of wisdom, probably not what it ought to be, but in terms of growing up, no, I still like goofing around.”
His post-“Late Show” work has included being at the helm of Netflix’s “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction,” where he has conducted long-form interviews with A-listers such as Kim Kardashian, Barack Obama and Will Smith.
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