It’s been 10 years since David Letterman stepped away from his late night talk show. Since then, Letterman has started a new life in Indiana, and he has no regrets when it comes to leaving Hollywood.
Letterman Has No Regrets
Letterman was in Hollywood for a long time, with Late Night with David Letterman debuting all the way back in 1982.
“In show business, I find that I have pretended to be someone I’m truly not,” Letterman, 77, told GQ. “In my life here in Indiana and at my home with my family, I am probably the person I actually am. And I regret that they don’t kind of cross at any point.”
When asked if he believes show business made him a “worse person,” Letterman was quick to answer in the affirmative.
“Yes. You’re exactly right,” he said. “And I don’t know, maybe it’s only because I went through show business. I got that out of my system eventually that I can concentrate on being a better person and probably couldn’t have reached this point if I had not gone through the exercise of trying to succeed at show business.
“I just feel like personally, I have greater humanity than I did when I was in show business,” he continued. “It was all single-minded and great pressure, real and imagined, and I felt like it’s all on me, and it’s all on me, and that it was all nonsense.”
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Letterman Admits He Was ‘Miserable’
Letterman went on to admit that he was “miserable” during many of his most iconic interviews in the 1980s and 1990s.
“There’s a couple of things going on there,” he explained. “I was drinking heavily in those days — that may have provided some fuel for misery. And I guess not achieving what I imagined to be, like — you take Johnny Carson, there’s never going to be anybody as good at that kind of show as Johnny. Nobody better.”
“Maybe there are people now who are excellent broadcasters and as good as Johnny, but nobody better,” he added. “So here I am thinking: ‘Oh crap, I am not going to be as good as Johnny. What am I doing here?’”
Letterman finally left Late Night in 2015. He had hosted the show for 33 years.
“For the last handful of years, my favorite part of the show was just talking to people,” Letterman recalled. “Because doing comedy each and every night, each and every night, each and every night, that’s meaningful and not just laughable, that’s tough. That’s really tough.”
“And I was always lucky to have men and women who were really smart and really good writers,” he added. “I just — I’d be in the next room. But the thing that I enjoyed mostly was actually just talking to people.”
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Letterman Loves His New Life In Indiana
These days, Letterman is loving his new life in Indiana.
“All I cared about was television, one hour of television that I was responsible for, for 30 years,” he remembered. “That’s all I cared about. Everything fell apart, went away. I didn’t even know if it was falling apart or not. And now I have the energy and the broader focus to recognize humanity has other fulfilling pursuits.”
That being said, Letterman doesn’t see himself as being retired. Indeed, he still hosts a talk show, Netflix’s My Next Guest Needs No Introduction.
“Retirement is a myth. Retirement is nonsense,” said Letterman. “You won’t retire. The human mechanism will not allow you to retire.”
“As long as you are healthy, you still want to produce,” he concluded. “And you will find ways to — once I stopped doing the show, it took me a couple of years to figure out that, oh, this is a completely different rhythm. And without the rhythm that you’re accustomed to, largely unsatisfying. So, you got to find something that’s important to you.”
Check out this full interview in the video below.
We’re so glad to see that Letterman has found happiness in Indiana! In the end, we can certainly see why getting away from the crazy world of Hollywood has benefitted Letterman’s life in a variety of ways.
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