Stephen Colbert is branching out into a brand new industry.
In addition to writing the new Lord of the Rings movie and winning Emmys left and right, the former host of The Late Show, 62, is working to expand a scriptwriting software company he developed called Scripto.
“While I enjoyed being a late-night host, I’m excited to move on to my dream job: Tech Oligarch!” he quipped in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
Colbert’s frustration with the computerized scriptwriting software on his Comedy Central series The Colbert Report led to Scripto; the host co-founded the company with The Colbert Report colleague Rob Dubbin.
The cloud-based software allows team members to collaborate on a script simultaneously. Colbert has $5 million in seed funding from a fundraising round led by Todd Steifel. The funding comes from Colbert and his wife, Evelyn McGee Colbert; J.J. Abrams; and Marc Cuban.
The Late Show used the software when Colbert took over in 2015, and writing became much faster. Since then, Scripto has spread to The Daily Show, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, and The Opposition with Jordan Klepper. Colbert hopes more of Hollywood can embrace it too.
“I saw what it did for my company, and I want everyone to do it,” Colbert continued. “It drives me crazy when I go into somebody else’s production, and then I’m back to PDFs being distributed and printed out on set. I’m like, ‘What is this?’”
In late 2010, the set of The Colbert Report used the Associated Press’s Electronic News Production System to write scripts, but limitations on collaboration and content, plus frequent crashes, frustrated the staff. The moment that “really broke us,” Colbert said, was when nobody saved rewrites that removed a segment with a goat. The goat showed up on set and cost the production $800.
Scripto has developed into a service that can handle hundreds of people working on a single project at once. It has expanded to Saturday Night Live in the U.S. and the U.K., to the Primetime Emmys, and to various video games and streaming shows.
“I have now used Scripto across multiple projects, and you can quote me on this: It’s the reason I came back to The Daily Show,” Jon Stewart joked to The Hollywood Reporter. “Election year, schmelection year, I just wanted to be back in that sweet script-writing interface.”
“Back on The Colbert Report days, Rob Dubbin and I had a little dream of trying to make our job easier, and I hope other people have the same benefit,” Colbert said. “I hope their days get easier the way our days got easier.”
Colbert said he’s taking things slow after his 10-year stint hosting The Late Show. Though he’s exploring different avenues, he knows his true home is performing.
“To be in the room full of laughter is an irreplaceable feeling. So I’d like to get back to that,” he said. “I just don’t know what that’s going to be yet.”
