LOS ANGELES — Stephen Colbert has gone straight to the source for advice on how to tackle his new job at The Late Show: David Letterman.

Colbert, speaking to reporters at the Television Critics Association press tour Monday about his impending debut, said he approached the legendary host and asked "if I could come hang out" ten days before the end of his run.

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The two spent about 90 minutes together, and Colbert said he spent about a third of that time asking questions.

"At one point I said, 'Do you mind me asking you these questions?' And he said, 'I don't mind at all, no one has ever asked me these questions.' And I said, 'Really? No one's ever asked you this?' He said, 'Who would know to ask and who would care what the answer was,'" Colbert remembered.

That statement hit the host hard.

"That was a very gracious way for him to say only the person sitting behind that chair cares about the conversation we're having right now," Colbert remembered.

Stephen Colbert on David Letterman's late night legacy of comedy #TCA15 pic.twitter.com/HjIBIlgShz — Jarett Wieselman (@JarettSays) August 11, 2015

The former Colbert Report host moved into his new offices above the Ed Sullivan Theater last week. Renovations to restore some of the theater's original look are well underway.

"You couldn't tell it was a theater and now you can," Colbert said of the new look. "I find it to be a very intimate space now, because we're sort of acknowledging we're in a theater."

Another change viewers will see is the position of the host desk, a move he took on Letterman's advice.

Toward the end of their time together, Colbert had one last request of his predecessor: help working the elevator.

Back in 1993, when the theater was last renovated, Letterman asked that the old brass-handled manual freight elevator that he used to get down to the set not be changed, according to Colbert, who asked the same.

"He said, 'Oh, it's the best thing in the building.' And he showed me how to run the elevator and then he showed me how to open the door so the elevator would be right there," Colbert remembered. "And then he said, 'There, now it's waiting for you.'"

Colbert makes his hosting debut Sept. 8 on CBS.