Stephen Colbert Opens Up to Anderson Cooper About Loss

Fans of celebrities are often as obsessed with how the rich and the famous grieve as they are with their ultra-lifestyles. The difference is that while the VIPs’ day-to-day extravagances remain out of reach for the average onlooker their struggles with great loss become a great equalizer. When stars open up about what it’s really like to lose loved ones, as Stephen Colbert did in a CNN interview conducted by Anderson Cooper last month, the cultural taboo against talking about loss lessens. Rich or poor or somewhere in between, we relate to one another’s heartbreak, coping mechanisms and lessons learned.

CNN journalist Cooper, who was born into the aristocratic Vanderbilt family, had no difficulty commiserating with Colbert’s sad story about losing his father and two brothers in a 1974 plane crash when Colbert, the youngest of 11 children, was 10 years old. Cooper also lost his father at age 10 and suffered the loss of his brother by suicide when he was 21. During the interview, Cooper also opened up about the death of his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, this summer and the condolence letter Colbert sent him afterward.

“You said, ‘I hope you find peace in your grief,’” Cooper reminded Colbert. “One of the things I’ve been thinking a lot about is how we don’t really talk about grief and loss. People aren’t comfortable talking about it.”

Cooper went on to say that talking about grief both online and in-person with others who also experienced loss was how he has been finding his peace. “I found that the most helpful thing, I found it to be the most powerful and moving thing,” Cooper said. “And I kind of, oddly, don’t want that to stop because, in regular times, people don’t do that.”

During the exchange, the two men seemed oblivious to any sort of audience, intensely wrapped in their own thoughts as they discussed how they very differently processed loss. Colbert leaned on his progressive Catholic upbringing in which his father was an immunologist and medical school dean at Yale University, and his mother a homemaker. He explained, “It’s a gift to exist and with existence comes suffering. There’s no escaping that.” He added, “I don’t want it to have happened; I want it to not have happened, but if you are grateful for your life…then you have to be grateful for all of it. You can’t pick and choose what you’re grateful for.”

Cooper recalled his famous mother’s optimistic method of dealing with grief, which he recognized as one of her greatest strengths. “Despite tragedies and losses, she consciously chose to remain open and vulnerable and optimistic and believing the best in everybody she met.”

Though their backgrounds greatly differed, they agreed that loss changes a person by giving them an awareness of other people’s losses. As lonely as it may seem, it allows a person to connect with others who grieve and that connection “allows you to love more deeply and to understand what it’s like to be a human being if it’s true that all humans suffer,” said Colbert. Before their heart-to-heart talk was over, both well-known personalities had disclosed so much personal story and beliefs that it was almost impossible to determine who was the interviewer (Cooper) and who was the interviewee (Colbert), an irony Colbert touched upon as they signed off.

You can listen to the full interview below.