Stephen Colbert welcomed Rose McGowan to The Late Show with Stephen Colbert last night – a woman who certainly lit the fuse that caused the #MeToo and #TimesUp mainstream explosion.

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert has never had a guest like Rose McGowan before. She shakes up the status quo of how a guest should act – basically, she gets down with real talk that perfectly expresses her overexhausted frustration of the extremes of social politics.

Rose McGowan continued by explaining her comfort with discomfort, which explains her apparent comfort with the interview. The audience was eerily quiet while Rose McGowan was on stage, and that silence was hard to read. Considering The Late Show‘s demographic, the logical conclusion was well-deserved awed reverence.

It’s nice to hear how much respect she has for some of the nicer points of Canadian society!

But this interview is one to pay attention to, for both its content and style. McGowan, a veteran Hollywood actor, comes dressed more casually than any guest on The Late Show before her has; she speaks more candidly than any guest before her, and she does it without hesitation or concern. She is a person in complete control of her public image simply by not playing the game anymore – you know, the game where actors have to have just a touch of fakeness to their persona just so they don’t come off as “off-putting.” The tide is turning on that one, and it looks like Rose McGowan is largely responsible. It’s refreshing to see, and her honest retelling of her recent arrest is testament to that.

It’s clear that throughout the interview, Colbert wanted to talk about Harvey Weinstein. It’s equally clear that Rose McGowan did not. It’s not that she’s uncomfortable with the subject – if you’ve paid any sort of attention to her in the past six months, she’s anything but. But she has other things to say instead of the old rehash that she’s already been through over and over since the #MeToo #TimesUp movements have hit the top level of the mainstream.

This speech that McGowan gives is fascinating, inspiring, and completely on-the-nose. Her criticism of George W. Bush is, again, refreshing (though, if you pay close attention, she was very close to comparing him to Hitler, with the whole artist-turned-head-of-state example, but quickly stopped herself). Recently Bush has been fondly remembered in the media – and he should be remembered for at the time being widely considered the worst President in modern history. Having an even worse President (you know, the always infamous Donald Trump) now doesn’t change the fact that Bush’s decisions as a President destroyed the economy, and destabilized an entire region of the world.

To use the word again, this entire interview is refreshing. McGowan’s candidness retroactively colours most other interviews with a thick layer of insincerity. Colbert can learn a lot from last night: more people like McGowan. More truth and honesty.

Be sure to catch more of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert airing weeknights at 11.35 et/pt on Global, or catch up on episodes on GlobalTV.com, or The Global GO App!