Here are some photos of Stephen Colbert at last night’s US-Ireland Aliiance’s Oscar Wilde Awards event at J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot offices. As you can see, Colbert debuted a bushy, silver Colbeard. It is glorious!!! Colbert now reminds me of that sexy beast (to me!) John Slattery. Of course, the silver beard also ages him – it wasn’t until just this very minute that I realized that Colbert is actually 50 YEARS OLD. I thought he was maybe early 40s. He’s a handsome man and without the beard, he could easily pass for someone a decade younger. Colbert spoke to The Daily Beast:

“I have not allowed this to happen to my face since college because I’ve been working professionally pretty constantly since then,” he explained to The Daily Beast. “I have like nine months where nobody has to see me so I said, ‘I wonder what I look like?’”

The Colbeard was an instant hit on the red carpet. “In a pre-industrial stainless steel razor’s edge society, this is what I would have looked like all the time,” he said. It’s almost Clooney-esque, I offer.

“You know what? I was too humble to drop the C-word, but I’m gonna say Clooneyesque right now—and I’m only echoing you,” he smiled.

“As a performer I’m jonesing. I haven’t been onstage in two months,” he said. “My show ended two months ago and technically, for the record, I’m not in character. This is me. It turns out the real Stephen Colbert had a beard the whole time, I was just so deeply in character for ten years you didn’t notice. That’s how good of an actor I am.”

[From The Daily Beast]

Colbert also joked about his Irish heritage and “coming out of the closet” as an Irishman after years of pretending to be French. He still has months to go before taking over The Late Show. It really seems like we’re going through a major comedy transition these days. Who will see us through the 2016 election cycle? Will it be Colbert? Will it be John Oliver? WHO?!

Photos courtesy of WENN.