Bob Odenkirk Isn’t ‘Concerned’ About Stephen Colbert

It’s hard to remember just how doom and gloom it was when Conan O’Brien was fired from The Tonight Show. Well, for normal people, it’s hard to remember. It was almost twenty years ago. Why waste time reveling in it? When you spend most of your time around two people whose current favorite thing to do is add “butt” to everything (“Your foot is a butt,” “More like Butt-berries,” etc.), your mind starts to wander. You begin to think about what it felt like when Conan’s butt-dream got pulled away from him.

There was certainly uncertainty. While rumors flew about where Conan’s show would move, nothing was guaranteed, and a lot of it sounded … ill-advised. I remember a prevailing theory that he was going to wind up on FOX, and that would have been disastrous. That show wouldn’t have lasted longer than a year. Instead, he went to TBS and had a whole second act to his late-night career. He eventually parlayed that into a wildly successful podcast career. Conan O’Brien is OK, despite being fired from his dream job, so maybe it’s safe to assume the same about Stephen Colbert.

Colbert was unceremoniously fired from The Late Show recently, in a move that will also see the decades-long show come to an end. It sucks, and, despite what people are claiming, it was done for nefarious purposes. There’s a fragile loser who constantly needs his ego appeased, and he corruptly wields a lot of power. So, here we are. The death of late-night, expedited by a fourth-rate reality TV host. Still, it’s safe to assume that Colbert will be okay. That’s what Bob Odenkirk is doing.

The Better Call Saul actor recently sat down at Comic-Con and spoke to Colbert’s firing, mentioning that he can’t say for certain what motivated Colbert’s firing, but he admitted, “I do know that viewing patterns have shifted.” He was more sure about something else, though. “Here’s the one thing I’m not remotely concerned about: not having Stephen Colbert do excellent work for the rest of his life as long as he wants to,” he explained. “Whether it’s on a different platform, or for CBS under a different banner, or his own company.”

He isn’t the first person to express this sentiment. Many have come to Colbert’s defense, leading with the idea that he will keep creating and entertaining. Odenkirk took it a step further and even compared Colbert to my favorite gargantuan redhead. “It’s not gonna be unlike Conan O’Brien, who you can see every day, all you want,” Odenkirk noted. “He’s gonna make stuff, ‘cause Stephen is a creator, and a genius, and his voice is pure and wonderful.”

It’s too early to tell what Colbert’s next move will be. He’ll be at The Late Show until May, and he has a lot of damage to do before that. But it does feel like a foregone conclusion that he will continue to make us all laugh and smile. Be it a podcast, YouTube show, or park corner where he dances a jig with his pants around his ankles, Colbert is going to give us the goods for as long as he can, and no feckless corporate executives are going to stop him.