Vince Vaughn is weighing in on the state of late-night television, claiming that shows “stopped being funny” when they drifted away from lighthearted entertainment to political commentary.
“It started feeling like I was f***ing in a class I didn’t want to take,” Vaughn, 55, shared during an interview with Theo Von on the comedian’s “This Past Weekend” podcast on Tuesday, March 24. “I’m getting scolded.”
Vaughn didn’t call out any TV personalities in particular but was believed to be referencing Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert, the latter of whom is retiring as host of CBS’s The Late Show on May 21.
“I think that talk shows, to a large part, became really agenda-based,” Vaughn said. “They were going to [evangelize] people to what they thought. You know what I mean? And so people just rejected it because it didn’t feel authentic.”
Vaughn speculated that viewership took a dip in a measurable way because the shows became more partisan and lost the broad appeal they once had.
“If you look at what happened to the talk shows and why their ratings are low, it’s got only to do with the fact of what you just said, which is they all became the same show,” the actor continued. “And they all became so about their politics and who’s good and who’s bad. And it’s like, imagine sitting next to someone like that on a f***ing plane. You’d be like, bro, how do I get out of this f***ing seat?”
Vaughn said he always gets along with people and tries to be “honest” about who he is and where he stands. “But yeah, there’s times you felt like it would’ve been easier,” he added.
“It’s almost like a career move,” the Nonnas star — who shares daughter Locklyn, 15, and son Vernon, 12, with wife Kyla Weber — pointed out, noting that he “has opinions on both sides.”
During the podcast, Vaughn also claimed that members of the Hollywood elite often try too hard to “please everybody” and end up putting “themselves in a corner.”
“People my age, we disagree, agree, we’d change our minds, we’d laugh, we joke,” he said about his generation, claiming a lot of stars get rewarded for being political.
“They started to come out there and do it, and I don’t even know how much everyone even is informed on everything, but they really like to get out there and do it,” he went on. “And they’re hypocrites too, a lot of times, like anybody is.”
Vaughn said it’s important to be able to poke fun at yourself and not take things too seriously, adding, “You can look back at stuff that you believed so strongly a few years ago and laugh about it.”
