| GQ's latest video cover story. |
“If the fame has crushed you personally, I prefer that kind of person than somebody who wears it well,” the one-and-only David Letterman tells Zach Baron in our latest GQ Video Cover Story. Bet! —Nick Catucci, site director |
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David Letterman Says ‘Retirement Is a Myth’ in His GQ Video Cover Story |
In November, the broadcasting legend David Letterman and I met at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, in Indiana, where Letterman grew up, to shoot a GQ Video Cover Story. It was Letterman’s idea to go to Indianapolis. He left town in the ‘70s to seek his fortune in Hollywood (short version: it worked out), but he has fond memories of Indianapolis and particularly of the IMS. He described to me going as a kid with his uncle and hearing the sound vibrate up from the track in a way that he could feel throughout his entire body. In fact, Letterman’s first appearance on national television was interviewing Mario Andretti after the driver crashed out of the Indianapolis 500 in 1971; now, more than five decades later, he’s a part-owner of a racing team here, Rahal Letterman Lanigan.
“In show business, I find that I have pretended to be someone I’m truly not,” Letterman told me. “In my life here in Indiana and at my home with my family, I am probably the person I actually am. And I regret that they don’t kind of cross at any point.”
Letterman is probably the most decorated and longest serving late night host in the history of television, a legacy he wears with his signature mix of pride, deflection, and self-loathing. I’ve interviewed a lot of people in my life. But I’m not sure if I’ve ever interviewed anyone quicker—with a joke, with a dodge, with a perfectly off-kilter anecdote—than David Letterman. At 77, he is still, improbably even to himself, working. Today, he launches something called the Letterman TV FAST Channel, on Samsung TV Plus, which is a collection of highlights from, and new commentary on, The Late Show with David Letterman. Letterman also still hosts a regular talk show on Netflix called My Next Guest Needs No Introduction. “I’m surprised that I’m still doing it at my age,” he told me. “On the other hand, I still get a kick out of what we’re doing. So what does that mean? I don’t know.”
In our conversation we talked about, well, nearly everything — the art of interviewing, the cost of showbiz on the soul, the impossibility of retirement, Letterman’s years of late night wars with Jay Leno, his influence and total aversion to nostalgia, his skepticism of fame (“If fame has crushed you personally, I prefer that kind of person than somebody who wears it well”), and much more.
Watch the GQ Video Cover and read excerpts from the interview.
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