A couple of months into 2026, my sister and I found ourselves at our local Starbucks, writing down a list of things we wanted to do before the next decade was out. About ten years ago, my friend Veronica and I had done something similar — a list of thirty things we wanted to do before we turned thirty, which we promptly forgot about. Yet, somehow, a surprising number of them ended up happening anyway. So this year, with renewed resolve, Vee and I embarked on our 40-before-40 lists. My sister — finally an adult, and now one of my best friends — was looped in too.
We had one rule ten years ago and we have one rule now: you have to dream like a child — wild and free. There is no room for caution in unbridled optimism.
I’ll confess: I haven’t been fully obedient to that covenant. I wrote out most of my list with all my hopes and dreams for the future, but in places I was holding back. Some dreams suffered from the unyielding yoke of reason.
When I heard last summer that The Late Show with Stephen Colbert was being taken off the air, I was disappointed. I’d watched him on YouTube, on and off, for years. He had always struck me as funny, kind, and a deeply decent man. I tried to reserve tickets in September, but, due to personal reasons, ended up in D.C. that month instead. I never even checked my email to see if the invitation had come. After that, I tucked it away.
When this year began and I started making plans to come back to New York for a visit, the thought returned. Hesitant to put it on the 40-before-40 list because of all the naysaying questions in my mind, I didn’t. What if my trip to New York doesn’t come around before he goes off the air? What if I don’t get tickets? What if I get stuck on a waitlist that never converts?
Then, in early May, on one of those temperate afternoons in the city, I switched off my brain, got on the train, and joined the standby line outside the Ed Sullivan Theatre. I waited over three hours. The priority queue kept growing and at one point looped around the block. The General Admission line, across the street, kept growing too. Ours — the line for those of us without tickets, betting our afternoons on a chance to get in — held steady against the wall.
The wait was made bearable by strangers who became brief friends. We traded stories the way you do when you suspect you might be doing the same stupid thing. We rooted for each other and did some wishful maths to convince ourselves there was still hope.
Four o’clock came, and the wait became excruciating. The priority holders went in. The General Admission holders went in. An usher emerged and gestured that maybe — just maybe — there were eight or ten seats left for those of us still waiting. I have rarely felt my heart sit that high in my chest. He went back inside. He came out again. There were no seats. Last-minute house guests had taken them. I lingered outside the doors for a while after the crowd had dispersed, and then I left.
A few days later, on May 13, I came back. The street was partly closed when I arrived. While I was walking back and forth trying to find where the standby line started, the sound of a chair falling from the sky caught my attention. Several stories up, Stephen Colbert and David Letterman were heaving furniture off the roof of the Ed Sullivan Theatre. Later, I learned it was a bit about the wanton destruction of CBS property. It was not something I had expected on a Wednesday afternoon in the city, but I stood there smiling for a while, neck craned, before joining the standby line for the same three hours.
I made new friends. Felt my heart stop the same way. This time, when the usher came out, the first five or six of us made it in. They checked our IDs, took our names, and gave us our wristbands. I couldn’t believe it. I had been hedging against this outcome for months — telling myself how unlikely it was, how I would have to make my peace with it — and yet here I was, on a Wednesday afternoon in mid-May, watching it happen for me.
Inside the hallowed halls of the Ed Sullivan Theatre, we were shown to our seats. Most of the waitlist was sent to the back of the balcony, but one seat was open closer to the front, and since I was a party of one, I took it. After everyone was seated, the ushers organised one last trip to the bathroom in batches — five minutes to five, taping about to start. I did the mental maths, decided to risk the line, and made it back to my seat just in time.
Once the taping began, no one was allowed to leave their seats. Who would want to, anyway? Paul Mercurio, the show’s warm-up comedian, came on and worked the crowd; the house band, The Great Big Joy Machine, played for a while — almost a mini-concert in its own right. Then the stage manager appeared, walked us through the basic rules, and the moment we’d been waiting hours for arrived: Stephen walked out for his cold open. It landed exactly as you’d expect — brilliant, with the crafted ease of an entertainer who has been doing this for a while.
What you don’t see, on a screen at home, is the choreography. A hand reaches in from off-camera to pass him a prop; for the half-second before it appears in the shot, he gesticulates with one hand only, in a way that looks completely natural — until you’ve seen it once, and then you can’t unsee it. The overhead studio screens flash the headlines, the graphics, the video clips that arrive seamlessly on television. Everything is scripted, mapped, cut, and edited so carefully to give you what you end up seeing. And yet what we’d been told as an audience was almost nothing — keep the energy up, keep it loud, let Stephen play off us.
Next, Stephen introduced a pre-taped segment — his Colbert Questionert with President Obama, filmed in Chicago — which played for us on the studio screens. Then, of course, the main guest. On this day where fortune had favoured the bold enough to wait three hours for a maybe, the guest was — of all people — THE TOM HANKS.
I won’t linger long on the interview itself — the uncut video lives on the internet for anyone who wants it. What I’ll say is that Hanks, live and in a room, is as captivating as he is when he brings his characters to life. He talked about a new documentary he was making for the History Channel on the Second World War. He talked about his coffee brand and its work for veterans. He handed Stephen a typewriter as a birthday gift. He was, exactly, as charming as you just know he would be.
After the interview, they shot the cuts to commercial — something I had not known they did separately at the end. On TV it feels too natural to be staged, almost baked into the interview, so it was a small surprise to see it being shot in retrospect: Colbert and Hanks pretended to chat, Stephen turned to the camera and set up the break, a beat later said and we’re back, and they pretended to come back. They did it twice.
After this, two young women came up to shoot some short-form content for Instagram, and Hanks made a joke — I was on Apollo 13 — insinuating that he is now beholden to making internet content. It landed exceptionally well. What was supposed to follow was a Broadway performance, but it had been pre-taped earlier in the week, so we didn’t see it live. Taping wrapped with Stephen thanking the audience, and the audience, in turn, singing him Happy Birthday. He stood there smiling, taking it in.
As I picked up my coat to leave the Ed Sullivan Theatre, a pixelated, tiled-mosaic artwork caught my eye. The lady ahead of me in the standby queue had told me to look out for it, and I did. It felt, somehow, as though it had been waiting for me.
The whole afternoon had felt like that — preserved in the suspended, time-frozen magic of a snowglobe. Not unlike in television, every word said in that room, every stranger I met in line, and every tile in an almost unnoticed mosaic felt perfectly scripted, meticulously choreographed. It was almost as though the universe had been conspiring to assemble this afternoon just so that I could be its witness.
What can I say. That’s just show business, baby.
📝 Footnotes:
*The first image below is a illustrative rendition of me inside The Ed Sullivan Theatre as photography and videography are strictly prohibited inside. The other images are real personally taken photos.
The Big Smokey Apple 