Stephen Colbert returned to The Late Show on Monday (December 11th), after being hospitalized recently for a ruptured appendix.
“It’s so lovely to see all of you,” he told his audience. “The last time I was sitting at this desk, which was the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, I was in a heap of trouble. I was not aware of the amount of trouble I was in.” Band leader Louis Cato chimed in to say, “For the first time in almost nine years, you had to rehearse the monologue witting at the desk with a barf bucket next to you.”
“The pain was manageable,” Colbert quipped. “It only hurt when I moved and when I didn’t.” To further illustrate what his ruptured appendix felt like, he showed a clip from Alien during which the creature bursts through John Hurt’s torso.