Last week, Stephen Colbert was forced to retire the “Stephen Colbert” character from his long-running Comedy Central show, “The Colbert Report.”
He made the announcement during a live taping of “The Late Show” on CBS.
The move appears to be in response to backlash from Comedy Central lawyers, who claimed intellectual property rights over Colbert’s blustering, boastful, politically conservative alter ego.
Colbert brought back the alter-ego version of himself during a live taping after the Republican National Convention, and he hosted one of his signature segments from the Comedy Central show, “The Word.”
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Following the Democratic National Convention, Colbert explained that the lawyers were unhappy about “Colbert’s” appearance. To claim someone’s name and likeness as your property is a strange notion, but when that name is said a certain way and that likeness is contorted just so, it can cause a bit of a branding crisis.
“Because — and this is true,” Colbert explained to his audience, “Immediately after that show, CBS’s top lawyer was contacted by the top lawyer from another company to say that the character Stephen Colbert is their intellectual property.”
Even though it appeared that Colbert broke when he told his audience that “with a heavy heart” the character would “never be seen again,” the fact is, the host didn’t even bend.
Instead, he rolled out the “identical twin cousin” of the Stephen Colbert character. And instead of delivering “The Word,” he delivered “Werd.”
No “werd” yet on whether Colbert will continue to make appearances as Colbert’s twin cousin.
(Image via)Goodbye, Stephen Colbert. Hello, Stephen Colbert! https://t.co/gqfqUNiNhK http://pic.twitter.com/qh0AdH0Jna
— The Late Show (@colbertlateshow) July 28, 2016
from PR Daily News Feed http://ift.tt/2aDFbqj
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