He may need a spoonful of sugar to soften the blow.
David Letterman revealed that a recent “fan” mistook him for Dick Van Dyke.
“Here’s what happens to me now — people used to know who I am, and now I have to wear a name tag to get anything going,” the former Late Show with David Letterman host,
Dick Van Dyke speaks during the 43rd Annual Kennedy Center Honors at the Kennedy Center on May 21, 2021, in Washington, D.C.
Letterman hosted The Late Show from 1993 to 2015. Since then, he has fronted the Netflix series My Next Guest Needs No Introduction With David Letterman and grown a bushy white beard.
He recalled a recent encounter at a farmer’s market.
“A guy comes up to me and he says, ‘Excuse me, are you who I think you are?’ And now I’m all loaded up, so I respond, ‘Well, that depends on who you think I are.’ That always gets a big laugh,” Letterman explained.
“I said, ‘Who do you think I am?’ He said, ‘Dick Van Dyke,’ and I said, ‘No! What?!’”
David Letterman takes part in the 2025 Atlantic Festival at PAC NYC on September 18, 2025, in New York City.
Van Dyke is also an industry giant and a titan of comedy — but he’s nearly 20 years older than Letterman, as he is set to turn 100 on Dec. 13.
To mark the milestone, PBS will debut the documentary American Masters — Starring Dick Van Dyke on Friday at 9 p.m. The film explores his eight-decade career and what director John Scheinfeld described as Van Dyke’s “personal demons with alcohol” during the height of his fame.
“I’ve done a lot of these on famous people, and almost always there’s somebody who will say, ‘Oh, I didn’t like him,’ or ‘He did this, or she did that,’” Scheinfeld told The Post. “In the ten months we were working on this, there was not one person who had a bad thing to say about Dick.”
Dick Van Dyke looks on during the 43rd Annual Kennedy Center Honors press conference at the Kennedy Center on May 21, 2021, in Washington, D.C.
Zach Baylin and Kate Susman — creators of the Jude Law– and Jason Bateman–led Netflix drama Black Rabbit — told The Post that while filming in New York City, Letterman unexpectedly crashed their set.
“We were camped out in front of David Letterman’s apartment in Tribeca, and he was just coming home and happened to stumble upon the set,” Susman recalled.
She added that Letterman “ended up sitting behind the monitors and watching for a while, which was super cool. I think he had been locked out of his apartment, which is why he was on the street.”
David Letterman with Jimmy Kimmel on Dec. 9, 2025.
During his Jimmy Kimmel Live! appearance, Letterman told Kimmel, 58, “When I was your age, people my age and younger would come up to me and say, ‘We watch the show every night — we love it.’”
He recalled that after he left late-night television, fans began telling him, “‘Oh, we miss you.’ Then it became, ‘Oh, my mother watches you every night now, and she really misses you since you’re gone.’”
“Lately,” the comedian added, “‘It’s, “You know what, I’d like a picture of you to show to my grandfather — and his father, too — because we used to watch it together in the hospital.” Just like that.’”
