Stephen Colbert is saying goodbye to The Late Show after over ten years and more than 1,800 episodes.
The comedian kicked off the show with an earnest piece to camera (and the audience).
“This show… I want you to know this show has been a joy for us to do for you. In fact, we call this show The Joy Machine. We call it The Joy Machine because to do this many shows it has to be a machine, but the thing is, if you choose to do with joy, it doesn’t hurt as much when your fingers get caught in the gears, and I cannot adequately explain to you what the people who work here have done for each other, and how much we mean to each other,” he said.
He referenced his old show on Comedy Central. “On night one of The Colbert Report, back in the day, I said, ‘Anyone can read the news to you. I promise to feel the news at you’. And I realized pretty soon in this job that our job over here was different. We were here to feel the news with you, and I don’t know about you, but I sure have felt [the news] and I just want to let all y’all know, in here and out there, how important you’ve been to what we have done. The energy that you’ve given us, we sincerely need that to have done the best possible show we could have for you for the last 11 years.”
Before joking about OnlyFans, he noted the history of the Ed Sullivan Theater. “We’ve been honored to have been just a small part of it, Nichols and May played on the stage. The Beatles made their American debut here, and, backstage, Elvis used the bathroom and didn’t die,” he added.
It comes as Colbert has lined up a star-studded finale with Paul McCartney, who famously played the Ed Sullivan Theater in 1964 with The Beatles, as musical guest and A-listers including Bryan Cranston, Ryan Reynolds and Paul Rudd appearing throughout the show. Follow along below through the course of the “extended” episode.
Colbert has been on an elongated goodbye tour since CBS made the decision to axe his show and the entire late-night franchise ten months ago.
Canceled three weeks before David Ellison officially took control of Paramount, the network stressed that it was “purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night” and “is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.”
But since the cancelation came days after Colbert called Paramount Global’s $16M settlement of Donald Trump’s lawsuit a “big fat bribe”, it’s been hard for many to believe the two things were unrelated.
The Late Show began in August 1993 with David Letterman as host, having moved over from NBC after he didn’t get The Tonight Show gig. Letterman retired from the show in May 2015, and Colbert, who had previously starred on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, took over in September 2015.
Star Cameos
During Colbert’s monologue, there were a number of celebrity cameos including Bryan Cranston, Paul Rudd and Tim Meadows.
Bryan Cranston started things off by asking if he wanted a “surprise celebrity cameo popping up out of nowhere”. “No, Bryan, those always feel kind of forced,” Colbert replied.
“Maybe I could be your last guest,” the Breaking Bad star added. “That would be great, Bryan. The thing is, we already have a pretty special one lined up,” Colbert replied.
Next up was Paul Rudd, who started interrupting the host.
“I’m just curious when our interview starts? I have an extremely long poem I want to recite, and I don’t want to run out of time,” Rudd said. The I Love You Man star added that he’d brought a gift, that turned out to be five bananas rather than a gold watch.
Finally, it was Colbert’s old Second City pal Tim Meadows. “I was just explaining to Paul Rudd that for your last guest, you wanted someone you go back with, so we could talk about the good old days when you and I were doing Second City together,” the Mean Girls star said. “It’s not you either, Tim,” Colbert replied.
