David Letterman's DGAF attitude has become more apparent in the waning episodes of The Late Show. Even he's noticed the difference, telling The New York Times: "There's a difference between regular-season hockey and playoff hockey. And I'm not in the playoffs." This regular-season mentality shocked fans when he made a sexist joke last week during the show's warmup.
The Times was there for the remark but didn't seem to think much of it, meaning A. it wasn't as big of a deal as it was made out to be or B. the paper didn't want to sully its candid, parting Q&A with Letterman. The soon-to-be jobless comedian gave the Times quite a bit, commenting on the current late-night field and his 2009 sex scandal. Here are some of the excerpts from the interview:
On not capitalizing on the Internet as much as Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel:
"It sneaked up on me and went right by. People on the staff said, 'You know what would be great is if you would join Twitter.' And I recognized the value of it. It’s just, I didn’t know what to say. You go back to your parents’ house, and they still have the rotary phone. It’s a little like that."
On if he had any involvement in choosing Stephen Colbert as his successor:
"No. Not my show. When we sign off, we’re out of business with CBS. I always thought Jon Stewart would have been a good choice. And then Stephen. And then I thought, well, maybe this will be a good opportunity to put a black person on, and it would be a good opportunity to put a woman on. Because there are certainly a lot of very funny women that have television shows everywhere. So that would have made sense to me as well."
On if he thought he'd lose his job in the fallout from his sex scandal:
"Looking at it now, yes, I think they would have had good reason to fire me. But at the time, I was largely ignorant as to what, really, I had done. It just seemed like, O.K., well, here’s somebody who had an intimate relationship with somebody he shouldn’t have had an intimate relationship with. And I always said, 'Well, who hasn’t?' to myself. But then, when I was able to see from the epicenter, the ripples, I thought, yeah, they could have fired me. But they didn’t. So I owe them that."
Head over to NYT to read the entire interview.
