Stephen Colbert Reflects on 15 Years of Americone Dream

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Ben & Jerry's STEPHEN COLBERT reflects on 15 YEARS of Americone Dream

Stephen Colbert: 
It was 15 years ago on March 5th, 2007, when I had Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield on "The Colbert Report" to launch my Ben & Jerry's flavor, Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream. What a long, strange scoop it's been. 

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How did Ben & Jerry’s first ask you if you were into making an ice cream flavor?

Stephen Colbert: 
First year of "The Colbert Report," I think it was in 2006, so it was that fall. I got a call from my agent, James "Baby Doll" Dixon, who said, "Baby, Ben & Jerry's wants to do a flavor with you." And of course, it was hard to believe because I'm gonna be Cherry Garcia? What pun name can you make from Colbert? And he goes, "Don't worry about that. They wanna know if you're interested." I said, "Yeah, that would be a lot of fun. And, you know, we could set up a fund and give the money to charity." And he goes, "Yeah, maybe, and first thing is we gotta settle on your flavor." And I said, "Sure, whatever, like what, how much, what, how do we do this?" He goes, "They're gonna send you some options." So they sent me two or three pints, something like that. And they were unmarked containers. It was like, it was in one of those styrofoam coolers that had dry ice in it. It was like they were dropping off a spare heart or something and it had to have no label on it 'cause it was all super secret that they were gonna introduce a new flavor and hush hush and I couldn't tell anybody. We all got into my daughter's bed, me and Evy and her two brothers, Peter and John got into her bed and John was maybe five, four, maybe five which means Peter was seven and Madeline was ten. And I think I had two flavors and I can't remember what the other one was but they were rock solid because they'd come out of the cooler with the dry ice in it. And we chipped our way into it and passed the pints around and Americone Dream, or the one with the vanilla, the caramel swirl, and the fudge covered waffle pieces won out, hands down. And they had notes, my kids and my wife had notes. "Well, we were thinking a little bit of this, and tell them we'd like to..." And then I gave those notes to James and he goes, "Yeah, no, you got, it's this flavor or that flavor, these things have been, like there's like 10 years of development. They go in, they have out and like scientists with lasers measuring how big the waffle cone pieces should be when they get chunked and coated. And like how thick, how many microns thick you know, the caramel swirl should be as it makes the turn around the outside of the pint." So it was the basically, you get to pick one, which one it is but you don't have any input into what the flavor is. So Americone Dream. 

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Did you think it was a joke at first?

Stephen Colbert:
At first, I didn't believe that I was getting a Ben & Jerry's flavor. I didn't, you know, that old show, "The Colbert Report," which is the thing that inspired them to offer me the flavor, was really like doing a, I don't know, just like a project with your friends. It felt like we were doing a college newspaper. And I know that we sort of made an impression on the world in our first year, but for us we just kind of felt like we were doing it for each other. And so the idea that Ben & Jerry's would offer me a flavor seemed kind of crazy. 

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Who was the first person you told that you would be getting your own Ben & Jerry’s flavor?

Stephen Colbert:
The first person I told about getting my own flavor was my wife, Evy and she was pretty excited. She was like, "Do you get to pick your flavor?" I'm like, "I guess so. I mean, I imagine I get to pick my own flavor. I mean, it is my flavor. My name's gonna be on it and my face. So I assume I'm gonna be able to pick my own flavor." Like, "Well great, 'cause I've got some thoughts." 

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The big Americone Dream announcement happened on “The Colbert Report” on March 5, 2007 with Ben and Jerry as guests. What do you remember about that show?

Stephen Colbert:
What I remember was that Ben had, I think a pen that you could pull out and on the side of the pen there was a little chart you could pull out to show you how the U.S. budget was spent. I think it was like sort of activist thing 'cause Ben's very, you know, very much an activist, very much in the streets marching for what's right, which is beautiful. And Jerry is, too. But Ben, that night at least, I think they also had Frisbees that were a pie chart of where the U.S. budget went. I think, I might be making that up. I hope this isn't slander, but definitely they had some things they wanted to say about the political realities of America. I just wanted to talk about ice cream. I don't think you should mix politics and comedy. 

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Do you have any memories from the launch party after that show?

Stephen Colbert:
I must have gotten crunked 'cause I have no memory of that at all. I'm sure it was a lovely party. It must have been a great party 'cause the best ones I have no memory of. 

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In the first year of Americone Dream, you did a giveaway with your hometown minor league baseball team, the Charleston River Dogs, where you threw out the first pint. What was your favorite moment from that event?

Stephen Colbert:
This is a subject of much contention for me. Yes. That summer, the ice cream had already exploded, it was a phenomenon, obviously, I don't have to tell you guys. And they said, "Do you want to throw out the first pint at the River Dogs game?" And I love a good baseball game, especially minor league, it's my favorite. And I know that you can't bounce, you can't throw wild. You gotta, people are judging you and there's there is absolutely no generosity from that crowd. So an old family friend, Miles Barkley, who lived down the street on Sullivan's Island, South Carolina, I said, "Hey would you could do me a favor? I need some help practicing this." So we paced out 60 feet, 6 inches, you know, from the mound to home plate. And I took an empty pint, which we helped empty and I stuffed it with dirt. I took dirt from the yard and packed it in there and taped it shut so it would stay closed. And I was humming that thing into the plate. I mean, you could hear it go as it came through the air. Straight as an arrow man, Sandy Koufax. And so I'm ready to do it. No question. I'm gonna throw strikes, I'm gonna throw some heat. And I get there the next night, and do they have these pints frozen? No they don't. They have the pints in a cooler filled with ice that had been there all day. So the ice had melted and the pints were half melted in this icy water but it wasn't solid and they'd begun to leak. So they had coated themselves with a layer of half melted room temperature ice cream and there were frictionless surfaces. You could not get a grip on the pint in any direction. So the best I could do was, best I could do was take the pint and hold it in my hand so that the bottom that has a rim on it, I could hook my fingers over it. And I had to kind of like, you know, catapult it. I couldn't actually throw it 'cause I couldn't get a grip. I had to kind of like just overhand chuck it, kind of like I was bowling in cricket. That's the best I could do. And I got it to the plate, but it bounced when it hit the plate and I have yet to live down the shame and I'm still mad that no one was there to protect me. I blame Jerry for that one. I'm gonna let Ben off the hook. 

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What do you remember about your flavor feud with Willie Nelson, eventually settled by US Ambassador Richard Holbrooke?

Stephen Colbert:
Man alive. So we found out that Willie had his own own flavor, which was Peach Cobbler I believe, was the name of his. I remember, I believe it said it was like gluten-free. I believe it was gluten-free cobbler, I believe was it. And I said, "So there's no wheat in this?" And Willie said, "No weed?" So Willie was game. So I attacked Willie. He threatened me with the quality of his flavor and just the charisma, his magnetic charisma. And I was afraid that his ice cream sales would take away from my ice cream sales. And so obviously this unsettled a nation to see two icons of Americana fighting over whose ice cream was better. And we thought, "Who could we get to settle this?" And my booker at the time was good friends with Richard Holbrooke, Emily Lazar. She goes, "I bet Richard would do it." So Richard came on and a lovely guy, he's no longer with us, but truly just a giant and an enormous, loving personality. He came on, couldn't have been more thrilled and all he wanted to do was sing "On The Road Again" with Willie Nelson, which he did. And at the time a lot of people were pushing for there to be a Department of Peace in America. And I remember there was a moment backstage after the show when Willie was saying to Richard Holbrooke, "We should have a Department of Peace, don't you think we should have a Department of Peace?" and Richard Holbrooke who, and Willie's not a big guy, and Richard Holbrooke was a very big guy and he put his hands on Willie's shoulders and he goes, "We have a Department of Peace, Willie. It's called the State Department. We're there to stop the Defense Department from being necessary." 

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Since the launch in 2007, Americone Dream has raised millions of dollars for non-profit organizations across the US. That’s an impressive feat! Why was it so important to you to donate all your proceeds from the flavor?

Stephen Colbert:
While I love being on the label of a Ben & Jerry's ice cream and all the fun that it is to have your own ice cream flavor and to stop off at pretty much any gas station on I-95 when I drive south to Charleston for holidays and I can stop in and go to the freezer case in your local Quick Mart and there's my picture right next to Jimmy Fallon's picture on The Tonight Dough, or is it Late Night, no, it's Tonight Dough. It was late nights at Tonight Dough. Whenever I do that, I actually turn them toward each other and I take a photo and I send it to Fallon and I go, "Miss you buddy," like that . And he always writes, you know, "Have a pint on me" or whatever. Like he always writes me something back. So all of that's fun, right? But I get paid to do, I get paid well to do this job. and I think it's always nice to find some way if there's something that falls out of a tree that you didn't expect to find a way for that to help other people. And what was most important to me is that, and as I say to my staff every year, they're the ones who give away the money. They make submissions in the fall as to where they would like their portion of their donation of the proceeds going to charity go that year. And you know, people buy this ice cream because it's a good ice cream and they might be buying it also because it's associated with this comedy show that we've been doing for the last 15 years that are good enough that somebody might be motivated to buy a dessert associated with that comedy. And that's not just me. I'm not the one who does this show. We all do this show. I'm the guy who's lucky enough to have his name on the building and I'm the tip of the spear. And I'm not saying that I'm not important. I'm a huge fan of me. But I'm also a huge fan of all the other people that I get to work with. And I think the least I can do is give them an opportunity to say where this money goes and it's my happiest night of the year. It's my favorite night. We can have great shows all year round, but there is nothing better to do on stage than to say to the people on the staff where that money was going that they helped generate and that they're deciding how it gets distributed. That's what we do the last show before our Christmas break every year. And that's my favorite thing. It's almost my favorite thing about doing this show is that night, but it's certainly my favorite thing about having the ice cream is that it goes to help other people. 

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Many Ben & Jerry’s flavors have come and gone, but Americone Dream has consistently stayed in the top 10 fan favorite flavors, year after year. Why do you think that is?

Stephen Colbert:
Woo! Top 10? Top, top five, right? Come on. Vanilla gets a lot of grief for being vanilla but that's only really for vanilla that's not really vanilla. This is a true rich, deep vanilla flavor. Then you think, "Hey, that would be good enough," and then bang! Caramel swirl all through. You can't get a spoon in there without getting some caramel in it. And sometimes there's also caramel. And then just when you think it's safe to go back in the pint, chocolate covered waffle cone, that little , that little crunch, that'll burst of chocolate, drive away the dementors. I mean, it's got everything going for it. It's flavor, there's sweet surprise, there's a variety of textures. And you know you're helping people by eating it. You know, all of my proceeds are going to charity so you're doing a good thing for the world and a good thing for yourself because in the right balance, they say that ice cream, caramel, and chocolate is, it's life extending. Well, that's the inside scoop. I'm proud that the past 15 years we've had a top 10 Ben & Jerry's flavor that has raised millions of dollars. $4.25 million for charity and helps make some Americone Dreams come true. Thanks for eating it. See you in the freezer case.