The 'real' Stephen Colbert? Still scared of bears

It was, as the future host of CBS' "Late Show" put it, "a little like therapy."

If therapy took place in a ballroom full of reporters in Beverly Hills and was interrupted by live-tweeting and Donald Trump jokes.

Stephen Colbert made his first appearance in many years at the Television Critics Association's seminannual meetings, and let's just say he can come back anytime.

And that he probably won't have to.

With his Sept. 8 debut only a month away, Colbert met to answer, possibly not for the first time, who the "real" Stephen Colbert is, as opposed to the willfully obstinate character he played on Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report."

Fans of the "Report" shouldn't be surprised.

"I don't think anyone would have watched the old show if they didn't know who I was, because that guy was a tool," he said. "I meant a lot of it. I even agreed with my character sometimes," wearing the persona "like a cap," sometimes more lightly than others.

As the show went on, "it was an act of discipline ... to keep that cap on" and not reveal himself, especially during interviews.

His hope? That you'll think, "Oh, wow. A lot of that was him the whole time."

Asked about the bags of gummy bears CBS had distributed -- labeled, of course, "col-bears," he noted that the real Colbert is "honestly afraid of bears," and that "if something's going bad in my life, I dream about bears."

Other nuggets:

-- Joining George Clooney on his first show will be musical guest Kendrick Lamar, who was also his final guest on "Colbert."

-- He and his staff moved into the offices above the Ed Sullivan Theater this past week, and the set is being built. "The theater has been completely gutted...it's been taken back to its 1927" condition. Before, he said, "you couldn't tell it was a theater, but now you can."

-- He's moving the desk to the other side of the stage because David Letterman, when asked if there were anything he wished he'd had done, said he wished he'd tried that.

-- He's no longer sure he'll be "America's foremost Catholic. ("I'm still Catholic. We'll see where I rank.")

-- He plans to be a non-combatant in any late-night wars. "The idea of war between hosts makes no sense to me...[and] and doesn't sound funny," he said. "I got picked last for dodgeball. Competition's not that much fun to me."

-- He's itching to start the show, especially in a universe in which  Donald Trump is running for president. "Right now, I'm just dry-Trumping," he said.

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