Over the past decade, David Letterman — who left “Late Night” in 2015 — has had time to reflect on the ups and downs of her career.
In a recent interview, the 77-year-old late night television host spoke about the challenges he faced in show business and explained why he thinks the pressures of Hollywood have made him a worse person.
“In show business, I find I’ve been pretending to be someone I’m really not,” Letterman said. GQ. “In my life here in Indiana and at home with my family, I am probably the person I really am. And I wish they crossed paths at any point.”
When asked if show business made him a worse person, Letterman was quick to respond.
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David Letterman left “Late Night” in 2015, after 22 years as host. (Getty Images)
“Yes. You are absolutely right,” he said. “And I don’t know, maybe it’s just because I went through show business. I finally got it out of my system that I could focus on being a better person and I probably wouldn’t have been able to reach that point if I hadn’t tried to make it in show business .
“I just feel like, personally, I have a greater humanity than when I was in show business. It was a determined and enormous pressure, really unimaginable, and I felt like everything depended about me, and it all depended on me, and it all made no sense.”
Letterman, who recently launched Letterman TV FAST Channel on Samsung TV Plus, admitted that he was often described as “miserable” during most of his interviews in the ’80s and ’90s.
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Letterman said hosting late-night talk shows made him a worse person. (Andrew Toth/FilmMagic)
“There are several things going on there,” he said. “I was drinking a lot at that time – maybe that fueled the misery. And I guess I didn’t realize what I imagined I would be, like – take Johnny Carson, there’ll never be anyone ‘as good in this type of series as Johnny. Maybe there are people now who are excellent broadcasters and as good as Johnny, but there is no one better. “Oh shit, I’m not going to be that good than Johnny?’
Letterman left “Late Night” in 2015 after hosting the show for 22 years.
“In recent years, my favorite part of the show was just talking to people,” Letterman said of his experience toward the end of his career. “Because doing comedy every night, every night, every night, it’s meaningful and not just laughable, it’s hard. It’s really hard. And I’ve always been lucky enough to have men and really smart, really good women writers. I was just – I was in the next room. But what I loved most was just talking to people.
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Letterman began hosting “Late Night” in 1993. (Getty Images)
But along the way, the Indiana native faced many tough battles.
“I felt like every time I went out there was an expectation that I couldn’t meet,” he admitted. “‘Oh, there he is. He’s going to put on a show. He’s going to be funny. We’re going to have fun.’ And I kind of felt like that wait took a lot of energy, so I didn’t want to drain it before or after the show itself, which was always in desperate need of entertainment.”
These days, Letterman says he’s a much happier person living in his home state of Indiana.
“All I cared about was television, an hour of television that I was responsible for for 30 years,” he said. “That’s all that mattered to me. Everything fell apart, went away. I didn’t even know if it was all falling apart or not. And now I have the energy and the broader vision to recognize that humanity has other fulfilling activities.”
David Letterman, pictured with Britney Spears in 2006, hosted the late-night show for more than two decades. (CBS Archives)
Even though it’s been nearly a decade since he retired from Late Night, the TV host said he’s not sure if he’ll ever retire completely.
“Retirement is a myth. Retirement is nonsense,” said Letterman, who still hosts a Netflix talk show, “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction.”
“You will not retire. The human mechanism will not allow you to retire.”
“As long as you’re healthy, you always want to produce,” he added. “And you’ll find ways to do it – once I stopped doing the show, it took me a few years to realize that, oh, it’s a completely different pace. And without the pace that you’re at used to it, it’s largely unsatisfactory, so you have to find something that’s important to you.