Mmmm, no. I listen to podcasts where two people are in a hotel room and it’s fine. WITH VIDEO, even. One person is in their studio and the other is in Corfu and it’s fine. One person is in their apartment and the other is in their mom’s basement and it’s fine. The entire late night industry did interviews via Zoom for a year and it was fine (not better than the podcasts but still fine). In no way is “but he needs a studio” an excuse for being able to carry out an interview.
If you go to New York to be on the Tonight Show you can hit all of the other late shows, the Daily Show, all the news channels, plus campaign in Philly, New England, etc. You can pretty easily plan a packed campaign schedule around New York.
Heck, Colbert was supposed to be off the week of October 6th, the whole production shut down. Harris’s camp said “hey we have time for an interview the week of October 6th” and they put on an entire show because that’s when she could be there.
I think it’s incredibly audacious for him to ask her whole campaign to pivot to fit him in, when he could very easily find a way to speak to her on her own time, record and broadcast it.
They’re both flexing and neither is budging and from my perspective, he is dropping the ball.