Behind the Cover Story: Charles McGrath on Stephen Colbert Charles McGrath, writer at large for The Times, wrote this week's cover story on the comedian Stephen Colbert. His last article for the magazine was a profile of the novelist Nicholson Baker. Were you a fan of Stephen Colbert's before writing this story? I was sort of notionally a fan. The thing you have to understand is people my age don't stay up that late. The reason that I took the assignment when Hugo suggested it was that it would give me a reason to watch the show. After watching a lot of episodes of "The Colbert Report," did anything surprise you about getting to see the writers" room or Colbert's process? The most interesting thing is the unbelievable pace at which they operate. They create the show from scratch every single day. I was going over there about once a week. They would all be excited about certain jokes, and then you would go the next week and the world had passed by. Those jokes are dead and gone and we're on to something else. It's like a hospital emergency room the way they work. Of the three Colberts you talk about in the story - the real one, the fictional character on the show and the third one with a super PAC and ambiguous political ambitions - do you have a favorite? My preferred Colbert, and I assume that of most people who know him, is the real Colbert. He's incredibly smart, funny and generous, and he's just a decent human being. But periodically I would ask a question and he would start as himself and then turn into the character Colbert as he was answering. Jon Stewart is a friend and colleague, and Colbert's show emerged fully formed from "The Daily Show." But Stewart just has two gears: joking and full-on earnest. Colbert is more complicated. Is he just a comedian? Right, Stewart has this sort of hip, knowing, ironic gear. But Colbert has this persona that does it for him instead. Which is funnier? I can't say. And now of course Colbert has done this third thing. Stewart was frankly admiring of Colbert, I wondered if not even a little bit envious. Is the third Colbert, the one who is out in the world doing stuff, a real Republican? I don't know what he is. Well, one thing that makes him real is his super PAC. Who are these people who are giving him money? I've already gotten tons of e-mail about this piece, some from these people. They are of all sorts. Some are doing it as a hoot. Others believe in the cause. I got an e-mail from someone who has a good friend, a conservative guy, who won't listen to him and believes that Colbert is real. And this guy works at Hoboken Hospital, so I suggest that no one go there for surgery. Isn't Colbert at least a little worried about that? I don't think he worries about it. If he heard that he would be astonished. If you compare his persona now to what it was five years ago, it's much more transparent. Colbert's a little bit slippery. I kept pushing him on why he was doing the super-PAC thing. Was it because he wanted to educate people? And he said, no, I just want to be funny. But then the next thing he said is when you google "super PAC" he comes up. So he does want to educate people, I think. There's more of a mission to this than he maybe wants to let on. Having watched Colbert go through the whole drama of creating the PAC over the summer, I found it interesting to watch the primaries last week where all the sudden these PACs are coming in and dumping millions of dollars on Mitt Romney and the other candidates to bash each other. It was all PAC money that came flooding in at the last minute, just as Colbert predicted. So, you think the idea was that young people who are the main audience for "The Colbert Report" were more aware of this PAC money than they otherwise would have been? Of course, they had to be. I was more aware, too. Do you think that Colbert could ever become so transparent in his character that it becomes apparent that he really is using it as a tool for activism? You talk about Al Gore going on his show and getting a free pass from him to the point where Gore has to break the fourth wall and say, "Well, your character wouldn't like this." I think it's possible, but also that there is more discipline to him as a performer than that. But I'm sure he's tempted. Who wouldn't be? Here's the thing: He loves doing this. One of the first questions I had for him was do you ever get sick of your show and do you worry about what you'll do in a few years because you'll be so typecast by this? And that question hardly even meant anything to him. So you think that this is the one character that he will play his whole life? Yes, I do. After writing the piece, do you still have any questions about him, his popularity, his motives? Were there things you couldn't answer? I would love to get to know better the real, real Colbert. And I'd like to have the real Colbert answer some of the questions we were just answering for him.