New York — Meg Stalter has long thrived on the thin line between absurdity and sincerity, but on Thursday night’s Late Show with Stephen Colbert, she needed nothing more than a T-shirt to command the room. The shirt, in bold black lettering, read: “Meg Stalter Is The Prettiest Girl In America.”
Colbert, eyeing the garment, deadpanned: “That’s quite a statement.” Without missing a beat, Stalter replied, “So many people kept saying it, I thought it was probably time to put it on a shirt.” The audience roared.
It was a quintessential Stalter moment—self-mocking, self-mythologizing, and entirely disarming.
From Viral Clips to Streaming Stardom
Stalter, who first gained attention with surreal Instagram sketches during the pandemic, has since become one of television’s most unlikely rising stars. She plays the earnest but hapless Kayla in HBO’s Hacks, a role that turned her into a critical darling. Now, she headlines Lena Dunham’s new Netflix series Too Much, which relocates her comedic chaos to London.
Asked about filming abroad, Stalter observed, with mock solemnity: “London is so fun. But once in a while you’re having breakfast and you just want to scream, ‘Get me out of here!’ Their breakfast is so weird.”
Comedy Without a Net
If her presence feels unpredictable, it’s because unpredictability has always been part of her act. In her early days in Chicago, Stalter’s performances often blurred the line between theater and prank: stand-up routines delivered in nothing but a bra, entrances staged with fake blood dripping from her mouth. Sometimes the audience laughed. Sometimes they looked alarmed. Both reactions, in their own way, were the point.
She recalled, too, her short-lived career as a waitress. “I was only good if I had one table,” she said. “If I had two, I’d forget everything.” The memory drew laughter from Colbert’s crowd, who seemed ready to forgive her on the spot.
A Future Built on Rumors
When pressed about whether Too Much would return for a second season, Stalter leaned in conspiratorially: “I’m starting a big rumor that we are.”
It was less an answer than an invitation—to follow along, to believe in the possibility, or at least to enjoy the mischief of not knowing.
That, ultimately, is Stalter’s gift: the ability to take a homemade T-shirt, stitched together in her car, and make it feel like the centerpiece of late-night television.