As a post-primetime scribe, Meredith Scardino is an anomaly. A 2009 article in the New York Times pointed out that although females constitute a larger proportion of the audience, "very few women make it inside the writing rooms for late-night television hosts." At the time, there wasn't a single woman on the writing staff for Jay Leno, David Letterman, or Conan O'Brien. Colbert's co-head writer and executive producer was Allison Silverman, but when she left that year, Scardino (who had been hired a year earlier) was the show's only remaining female writer.
Scardino allows that perhaps men get more "comedy practice" over the years by making fun of each other as a foundation of their friendships—and that may provide greater confidence, which translates to more late-night writing applications from men than women. But frankly, she never thinks about the disparity until she is asked, and she's tired of being asked about it. So, it seems, are her affable co-writers.
A couple of years ago, the "Colbert" writing crew gathered at the Paley Center, only a few blocks from the "Colbert" studios, and sat for an interview conducted by New Yorker cartoonist Zachary Kanin. "Meredith," he began, "I think everyone here would like to know . . ."
The audience surely suspected he was going to reference the elephant in the room: Scardino was the only one of the eleven writers on stage without a Y chromosome. But Kanin knew that in 2007 Scardino, Levin, and a friend had been contestants on a TV quiz show that takes place during a taxicab ride (they won $1,500). So, this being comedy after all, Kanin pulled a bait and switch. "What is it like being the only member of the staff," he asked, "who has been on 'Cash Cab'?"
Naturally, the male writers relished the opportunity to roll out the clichés:
"There's a glass ceiling in the late-night comedy world for people who have been on 'Cash Cab.'"
"To be fair, we didn't get as many applications from writers who have been on 'Cash Cab.'"
"It is sometimes awkward when we're writing about people on 'Cash Cab' . . ."
Laughs all around, but when she was asked the question directly, Scardino offered the best line of all: "I don't necessarily feel like the only woman . . ." Or as she puts it now, "It's really male-dominant, but they're not dominant males."
A native of Villanova, Pennsylvania, Scardino was a born ham. As a four-year-old, she occasionally appeared on a local show called "The Al Alberts Showcase," where she would tell jokes like, "Where do cows go for entertainment? The moo-vies." As a nine-year-old, she wrote a letter to "Saturday Night Live" suggesting that it would be a great gimmick for them to hire a layperson host—perhaps a girl from outside Philadelphia. "I was a little comedy nerd," she admits, "but I had no idea how you went about pursuing that."
Instead, Scardino developed her artistic side. A painting major in the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning, she earned a master's degree in fine arts from Parsons The New School for Design. Always a fan of cartoons, she began animating for a couple of Comedy Central series, occasionally contributing scripts along with her drawings. Encouraged by the feedback, she concluded she was better equipped for a future in words. Her first TV writing job was a gig at VH-1's "Best Week Ever," a show in which comedians analyzed the previous week's developments in pop culture. "It was a good education," she says, "in taking the news and trying to regurgitate it in a way that was entertaining and told a story."
Scardino—who passed the time in high school history class by making top ten lists—earned a job in 2005 as the only woman writing for "Late Show with David Letterman," where she says, "You don't have time to wait to get inspired. You just have to get good at writing jokes." Two years later, she applied for the "Colbert" position. She swears that, during her interview, Colbert (who had recently returned from an October 2007 appearance at Barton Hall) was wearing a Cornell hat. Colbert remembers it this way: "I read a lot of comedy, and it's hard to get me to laugh at this point because you can get very mechanistic about it. But Meredith, she made me laugh out loud."
Scardino's fourth-floor office is right next to Levin's. But while Levin's responsibilities revolve around segments that might require weeks of focus, Scardino is on more of a day-to-day creative cycle. "The Colbert Report" is a largely topical show, so she keeps up with current events via newspapers, magazines, blogs, and TV. But often, Scardino's creative process thrives on spontaneity. "I wake up, look at the news on my iPhone in bed, and hope that in the shower a really good idea comes to me," she says.
Ideas are proposed in a couple of morning meetings, first with the head writer and then with Colbert and much of the production staff. Although the vibe in the room is relentlessly positive (both Levin and Scardino say it begins at the top with the "ridiculously nice" Col-bert), the environment still requires some fearlessness. "We're sort of like salesmen, pitching our products like we're selling the best vacuum in the world," says Scardino. "If I'm excited about something, I hope it comes off as confidence." After the meetings, the writers are sent off in pairs (in ever-changing permutations) with the goal of polishing the most promising ideas. Colbert has a background in improvisational comedy, and the writing room reflects that collaborative sensibility. "I don't care whose idea it is, mine or somebody else's," he says. "I just want it to be as funny as it can be."
Writing for Colbert's distinctive voice, says Scardino, is "liberating because you're already starting from such a funny point." She adds, "Stephen is like a hurricane of skills. He can sing. He can dance. He can cry on command. You can write anything for him, and you know he'd do a way better job than you can imagine. I'm sure if I wrote something that had him fly fishing while tap dancing, he'd be an expert at it."