In early 1982, DeForest was hired to appear on the new NBC program Late Night with David Letterman. His late-blossoming television career began with a New York University student film project called King of the Zs, by future Letterman writers Stephen Winer and Karl Tiedemann, who brought him along when they joined the Late Night writing staff. The Associated Press noted: "DeForest's gnomish face was the first to greet viewers when Letterman's NBC show debuted on February 1, 1982, offering a parody of the prologue to the Boris Karloff film Frankenstein. 'It was the greatest thing that had happened in my life,' he once said of his first Letterman appearance."
