Stephen Colbert recently told The New York Times that his first few months on “The Late Show” were uneven, but that producers encouraged him to return to his political roots.
Colbert said he originally planned to retire from politics after moving from “The Colbert Report” to “The Late Show.” He explained to the NYT: “My instinct was to keep it low-key, because I didn’t want to get involved in what is becoming an increasingly contentious public discussion, and I thought, ‘Is there another way to have fun with my audience?'”
But then the 2016 national convention gave Colbert an opportunity to push hard on political humor. The late-night host said at the time, “Was Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven or was it some other movie? He buried the gun. And I’m like, look, I’m the one who buried that damn gun. When I was talking to Paul Dinero, he’s one of my old friends and one of my producers here, and he was like, “You’re having fun, people love to see it.” And I said, “But that means I have to go dig out the gun.” And he said, “Buddy, that’s the part the audience wants to see.” ”
Colbert will soon air the final episode of “The Late Show.” His home network, CBS, announced that the historic late-night show would end in July 2025, calling the move an “economic decision against the backdrop of the difficult circumstances of late night.” Some speculate that CBS ended “The Late Show” to curry favor with longtime critic Donald Trump, who was able to use the FCC to block the pending merger between CBS parent company Paramount and Skydance.
Colbert told the Times that while he “jokes” about CBS’ ulterior motives, “I don’t dispute the rationale” for ending “The Late Show.”
“Two things could be true,” Colbert said. “Sometimes the broadcast industry is in trouble. You can’t monetize it because of streaming competition, because of things like YouTube. They’ve got the book, and I don’t want to argue with them about what their business model is and why it doesn’t work anymore. But it was less than two years before I got the call to say it was going off the air, and they had been wanting to sign me for a long time. So something changed.”
