Late Night Last Week: Brandi Carlisle and Elton John Talk Being Best Friends

By Will DiGravio  |  December 23, 2024 | 2:30pm
TV Features late night
Late Night Last Week: Brandi Carlisle and Elton John Talk Being Best Friends
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Every Monday,  ​​​​​Late Night Last Week highlights some of the best late night TV from the previous week. This week, Elton John and Brandi Carlisle talk about their friendship with Stephen Colbert, one last segment of “Jokes Seth Can’t Tell,” Jessica Williams on her viral Emmys moment, and John Mulaney and Simon Rich on their failed SNL pitches.

Few interviewers are able to so genuinely convey a sense of appreciation for an interviewee than Stephen Colbert. In a lengthy interview (an extended version of which was posted online), Colbert talked with Elton John about his life and work. The EGOT-winner has been doing a lot of reflection lately, part of the press tour for the new documentary about his life, Elton John: Never Too Late. 

John was joined on stage halfway through the interview by Brandi Carlile, who co-wrote an original song with John for the documentary. Much of the conversation focused on Carlile sharing her own memories of growing up listening to John, giving Colbert a way to offer his own admiration for the Herculean singer in a less direct way. 

Colbert asked Carlile how she first met Sir Elton. After moving to Los Angeles and receiving a record deal following her first two albums, Brandi Carlile (2005) and The Story (2007), Carlisle, a self-described “Elton John disciple from a young age,” wrote him a letter and asked if he would play piano on one of her songs. “In true Elton fashion, he agreed to do that outrageous thing,” Carlisle said. The resulting song, “Caroline,” is the sixth track on Giving Up the Ghost (2009). 

After the studio applauded, Colbert leaned in towards John and said, “There are a lot of people out there right now writing letters, you realize.” 

John was equally complimentary, calling her one of his best friends. “As soon as I saw her, I became friends with her,” he said. “It was like I had known her all my life.” 

The team over at Late Night with Seth Meyers ended the year strong with yet another reprise of one of the show’s best segments, “Jokes Seth Can’t Tell.” As always, straight-white-male Meyers is joined by writers Amber Ruffin and Jenny Hagel. For the uninitiated, the segment is simple: Meyers sets up the jokes, Ruffin and Hagel deliver the punchlines. 

See, for example, this Meyers set-up: “A student newspaper at UNC recently published an article titled, Am I a Lesbian For Wearing Cargo Pants?” To which Hagel responded, “No, you’re a lesbian for working at your college newspaper.” 

Daily Show alumnus Jessica Williams stopped by The Tonight Show on Thursday, where she talked about moving back home to Los Angeles, tacking up the guitar, and the latest season of Shrinking, for which she was nominated for an Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series. Williams, sadly, did not win the award earlier this year, losing out on the prize to Ayo Edebiri for The Bear. 

But where Williams did win is in that great competition of life: virality. She reacted to the loss by pretending to cry in over-the-top fashion. “I’m a deeply unserious person,” Williams said to Fallon. “Funny, but I like to be silly.” Originally, Williams said, she wanted to do something when they first read the nominations, but did not realize how quickly the ceremony would move on. So she had to improvise. “It was a risk,” she said, in reference to some folks perhaps not realizing it was all a bit. “It was a risk for sure.” 

We end by returning once again to Late Night, where two of Seth Meyers’ old employees paid him a visit. John Mulaney and Simon Rich stopped by to talk about All In: Comedy About Love, Rich’s new Broadway show featuring a rotating cast of characters that, for now, includes Mulaney at the top of the bill. But of course, the trio could not help but wander down that old, worn out path that goes by the name of Memory Lane. 

Mulaney and Rich shared memories of Meyers as a boss, noting that he almost always played the bad cop to Lorn Michaels’ good cop. They shared one failed sketch called “Cash for Silver.” Based on the old Cash for Gold commercials, the bit, as Mulaney lays it out, begins with Bill Hader in a tight shot, asking  for silver. “And he’s very insistent and frantic,” Rich said. “And you gradually realize why, and it’s because he and his family are marooned on Werewolf Island.” The crowd loved it. “And they need to make silver bullets by a certain date,” Mulaney says. “By the full moon,” Rich quickly says. But of course. Naturally.  

Okay, one more thing. One of the highlights of late night this past year has been seeing the continued growth of After Midnight, the Taylor Tomlinson-helmed program following Colbert on CBS. As viewers of the late night talk/game show hybrid will know, most episodes are fueled by internet clips, with guests responding to the funniest, most viral moments online. 

To end the year, the After Midnight team has published a 70-minute “That’s Enough Internet for This Year” 2024 Holiday Yule Log on YouTube, featuring some of the most memorable online videos and moments from the last year. From the Barefoot TikTok Couple and the family that had a candlelit dinner on the NYC subway, to Kamala Harris clips and “I like my suitcase,” this video has it all. 

Will DiGravio is a Brooklyn-based critic, researcher, and late night comedy columnist, who first contributed to Paste in 2022. He is an assistant editor at Cineaste, a GALECA member, and since 2019 has hosted The Video Essay Podcast. You can follow and/or unfollow him on Twitter and learn more about him via his website.

 
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