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As partners in life and work, comedian Stephen Colbert and his wife of 30 years, Evie McGee Colbert, are in the funny business. So it makes sense that their kitchen escapades are bound by humor as well.
The two grew up blocks from each other in Charleston, South Carolina, but didn’t meet until they were adults. During the pandemic, they discovered the kitchen was a place that they could collaborate.
Confined to their South Carolina home with their three grown children, homemade meals turned into a big source of entertainment. The result is Does This Taste Funny, their September release cookbook that is as much recipe index—it’s full of both family hand-me-downs and new discoveries—as it is a master class in couples therapy.
We caught up with the duo just ahead of that day’s taping of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert to chat about the importance of having fun while cooking, his dream to have the Pope do a cooking segment, and a kitchen fiasco from their newlywed days that they call the “spoon story.” The incident shaped their roles in the kitchen, and they have come to laugh about it all these years later.
The two of you come across as having fun when cooking. How do people have more fun with food?
Evie McGee Colbert: As a recovering insecure cook, I think you just have to relax. You just have to not take it so seriously. I always take it way too seriously. The thing that I’ve learned working on this cookbook is how forgiving a recipe can be, because I’m a rule follower. And that is the opposite of Stephen.
Stephen Colbert: Drinking wine while you’re cooking helps a lot. Seriously. Remember to drink it because sometimes you’ll get stuff on your hands and you’re like, I don’t want to touch the glass because it gets the glass dirty. Get the glass dirty. And then play music. Play music, drink wine, and don’t worry about it. Just have a good time.
The book feels almost as if the two of you are going through couples therapy.
SC: We say this in the front of the book, but this really did come out of COVID for us. We’ve never worked together before, and very specifically, did not work together, because what if working together wasn’t good. Like, what did it mean for our relationship?
EMC: He’s used to being the boss. It’s a problem
SC: It’s a real problem.
SC: But during COVID, she was my only crew and my only audience. And so if I needed somebody to do a bit with me, ever, I’d be like, “Please welcome my stage manager and my sound designer and my entire crew, Evie, my wife. Thank you for joining me.” And we had a great time. For 15 months, that was it.
SC: And then when we were asked if we wanted to do a book, we said “Well, yeah.” It turns out we like working with each other. And that was a really nice revelation to us.
When did you first cook together?
SC: You’re not gonna tell the spoon story, right?
I want to hear the spoon story. You allude to it in the book, but stop short of telling it.
SC: If it helps, we both feel terrible about this story.
EMC: We got married in Chicago. We were living in Chicago. It’s exciting. Newlyweds. I don’t even remember what I was cooking. For our wedding, someone gave us a series of nonstick pots.
SC: Beautiful, heavy Calphalon nonstick pots.
EMC: They were trendy at the time. This is 1993. I'm making something and I use a metal spatula.
SC: A metal spoon to scrape the bottom of the pan.
EMC: Stephen was like, “I think we have to nullify the marriage.” I don’t think I scraped the pan, but the concept that I could have, he was like, “We gotta have a conversation right now about spoons and pans.” So, what did I take from that? Never be in the kitchen with Stephen again.
SC: So this book is a miracle. It’s a miracle that we managed to do this book together.
EMC: I’m not cooking with this asshole. He's gonna be all mean to me every time I do something.
SC: This is why I don't like her telling the spoon story because she says it makes her look stupid, but we all know it makes me look like a complete tool. It's only taken 30 years.
How are you guys different as cooks?
EMC: I am an insecure cook. I literally had a friend give me an apron that said “no emo cooking,” because she’s like, “You get so emotional.” Like, if we have people over for dinner, I’m like “Oh, I don’t know. Is it good? Is it not good? Will they like it?” I’m just a wreck. If I had to cook for myself, I wouldn’t. I’d have cereal.
SC: And if I have to cook for myself, I’m gonna cook the most ambitious thing I can think of. And I’m gonna follow some little idea in my head to see whether that will work. Sometimes it doesn’t. I really enjoy it. I like the magic of it. This thing becomes another thing. It’s really like magic, the alchemy of it.
EMC: It relaxes you.
SC: Completely. It takes me out of my mind and purely into my imagination because you have to have sort of an empathetic relationship to the flavors. You have to imagine how they’re going to say “hi” to each other. And then that third thing is going to be once they do. I love that feeling. To me, it’s like it feels like fishing. You don’t know what’s going on at the end of that line, but you’re kind of feeling something at the end of that line.
EMC: Patience.
SC: I need my dishes to be more forgiving than that.
SC: I’ll get a wild hair; I really think I want to make this thing. I really want to see what I could do with morels and parsnips because something about those two feel right to me, and I’ll move around for a while until I find the thing that I meant. Or like pear and almond, what can I do and bourbon and phyllo, and how can I add more frangipane in my life?
When did this brain matter begin?
SC: For me it was being a free-range child. I’m the youngest of 11 and my mom was like, “Don’t burn the kitchen down, but you can go cook for yourself.”
EMC: And you waited tables and learned a lot too.
SC: Yeah, I learned a lot waiting tables for many years. I worked at restaurants where they made you learn the dishes and everything like that. So that helped a lot. I learned a lot about Italian food that way. Okay. But as a kid it was allowed to I made a lot of almost science experiment kind of meals when I was a kid. They were terrible, but the rule was I could make whatever I wanted, but then I had to eat it.
Stephen, when you have food guests on the show, are they aware of your cooking prowess?
SC: Prowess is a strong word. I have fun. When you have a cooking guest on the show, the point is not really to cook. The point is for this to be entertaining for the audience, and if they get the recipe out, that’s great. Daniel (Boulud) is very fun to have on. José Andrés is very fun to have on. Ina Garten is fun, Alison Roman. But there’s no one like messing with Martha Stewart. Trying to get in the way of her ability to finish the recipe is one of my great joys in life, because she takes it really well and she dishes it back, and couldn’t be more enjoyable.
The last time José Andrés was on was the night my appendix burst. I did the show with a burst appendix and I tried to just get through the show. I didn’t know I had a burst appendix. I didn’t know I was, what’s the word, dying. But José Andrés, I’m just trying to get through the segment with him. And right as I toss to camera, he decides he wants to dance with me. So he’s grabbing me and twirling me around and spinning me and I’m like, I am gonna pass out. If you look closely, you can kind of tell that things aren’t going well.
I’m going to have to watch that episode and see if I can see this on your face.
EMC: If you look closely, you can.
SC: If you look closely, you can kind of tell that things aren’t going well.
Dinner parties are a big part of your lives. Is there a dream dinner party guest?
SC: The Pope would be fun. I did the voice for the book on tape for the Pope’s memoir this Spring. The Vatican called and said, “Hey, would Stephen read the Pope’s book on tape in English.” It’s a memoir of his young life, and he talks about learning to cook from his mom and his dad and his grandmother. They’re Italian. They live in Argentina, but their home language was Italian and their food is Italian. His tortellini en brodo, like in broth, evidently was a big hit with all the seminarians. I really would not only want to have the Pope for dinner, but my dream guest is to have the Pope on, but for a cooking segment. And if we get to religion or faith, that’s fine, but we’re going to do his tortellini. I think he might even go for that because it’d be so refreshing. Everybody wants to talk about Jesus with me, but why not my tortellini.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
