The Man Behind Colbert’s Props

From a giant giant cup of soda to a ham with glasses on it, somebody has to make all the props on The Colbert Report and that somebody is Brendan Hurley. Martha Stewart’s Living has very interesting interview with him about how he has helped defined the show’s aesthetic. What was his favorite prop? He answered:

That’d be the guillotine. Stephen wanted to have a banana that had a condom on it, that he puts in a guillotine. There was one place I remembered seeing a mini-guillotine, but it closed down. So I just made one using scrap wood, aluminum railing and a butcher’s cleaver. I waxed the rails so the blade would slide down faster, but it had trouble penetrating both the condom and the banana. So I had to add weights to give it as much force as possible, plus I had to keep sharpening the blade, but it finally worked.

Just another day on The Colbert Report, decapitating phallic bananas.

The Man Behind Colbert’s Props