Super Fan Stephen Colbert Dresses Up as 'The Hobbit' Characters on 3 Magazine Covers!

Stephen Colbert is all dressed up as his favorite The Hobbit characters on the cover of EW magazine’s latest issue.

The 50-year-old talk show host wore Bilbo, Legolas, and Gandalf costumes for the covers – if you didn’t know, Stephen is a huge super fan of the J.R.R. Tolkien series.

“Tolkien‘s work has been a lifelong haven for me�”truly a light in dark places when all other lights went out,” Stephen wrote in an excerpt for the mag. “For an awkward teenager, Middle-earth was a world I could escape to. Peter Jackson‘s Middle-earth also gave me a world to escape to, but by the time his films came out, I was rich and famous and didn’t really want to escape my life anymore. Still, great movies.”

In fact, Stephen has schooled James Franco on his talk show The Colbert Report on Tolkien knowledge – watch below!

For more from Stephen, visit EW.com.