For the second time in a week, Stephen Colbert’s choice of guests more closely resembled a Recode Conference instead of a late night talk show.
On Tuesday’s edition of The Late Show on CBS, Colbert had on Apple CEO Tim Cook in a rare television interview that touched on a range of subjects.The nine-minute segment started off with the surprisingly affable exec revealing he felt “a little naked” in front of the huge audience before showing off the new iPhone 6S that rolls out next week.
(There was no mention of the impending ad-blockalypse, however.)
But it wasn’t a native ad for Apple, as Colbert nudged Cook into talking about candid opinions about Apple and his own life. He defended Steve Jobs as an “amazing human being” and called the movies depicting him as a heartless monster, like Danny Boyle’s upcoming flick, as “opportunistic.”
Cook also deflected Colbert’s question about Apple’s rumored self-driving car, saying “We look at a number of things along the way, and we decide to put our energy in a few of those.”
Showing that Colbert is a masterful interviewer shifting from the silly to sincere came when he introduced the topic of Cook’s sexuality by asking him “Was that an upgrade or a feature that was not turned on?”
Putting Cook at ease, he responded that his decision to come out in a Bloomberg Businessweek editorial last year was “no revelation” to his coworkers, but he said his stature of a major public figure could help others feel comfortable with being openly gay.
“Where I value my privacy significantly, I figured that I was valuing it too far above of what I could do for other people and so I wanted to tell everyone my truth,” he said.
Watch the segment below:
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