The end is near for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, with CBS’ late-night talk show set to air its final episode May 21 on the 2026 TV schedule. The network chose to cancel the show after 33 years — 11 of them under Colbert — and while emotions will certainly be running high when the host signs off for the final time, I can’t imagine it could get more stressful than that very first night.
Stephen Colbert is rounding out his last episodes on late-night TV with some big guests and plenty of humor, and before one recent taping, the comedian regaled his audience with The Late Show with Stephen Colbert’s origin story. Honestly, it sounds like it’s a miracle anyone ever saw it! The host recalled the hours following their very first taping, saying:
Very first show ends. It was a little rough. We didn’t really know what we were doing in terms of producing. We knew our comedy, we just didn’t know how to produce the show yet. It was not the same as Colbert Report, much more complicated. We didn’t realize how much more complicated it would be. So, back then, I liked to see the edit finished. So I'm up in the editing suites up on the seventh floor…. and the show will not export, meaning it won't come out of the Avid editing machine. Every time we try to export it, it crashes at exactly the same point, 1:30-ish into the monologue, and then it won’t go to the broadcast center to be sent to the world.
Technology, am I right? I’m certainly no expert, so if the button doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do when you press it, what 's even the next step (after turning it off and on again, of course)? This place of panic seems to be where Stephen Colbert was living a mere 30 minutes before he was set to make his Late Show debut. He continued:
Article continues belowAnd this goes on, and on, and on. And we go on at 11:35. It's our first show, it's 11:15 and I'm thinking, 'Shit, somebody should tell the network.' And I thought, 'Oh, I'm the executive in charge of production.' Meanwhile, all the tech people are like, ‘It’s going to be fine, man.’ [I said,] ‘On what do you base that analysis? You’ve been trying to export that show for two hours.’ Meanwhile, my entire family has come from all over the globe to be here for my first night. They’re at a party across town, including everybody I know.
Either the comedian’s IT people were very confident in their abilities, or they were trying to keep it cool in front of the boss, because one of the editors decided the best course of action was to bypass intermediary channels and export the show straight to the broadcast network from his computer.
The only issue, Stephen Colbert said, was that there were no TVs in the room to be able to tell if it was working. Now we’re getting to the heroic finale, and I'm picturing dramatic music and slow-motion when the host says:
I kicked open one of the accounting doors, and we went in there with a bottle of Old Forester bourbon. About six of us went in there. And there is a photo of the moment the show got past that minute-thirty mark and it was actually going to work.
The crowd went wild! The bourbon flowed! The editor who’d figured out the workaround took a victory lap, and while that was unquestionably a stressful few hours for Stephen Colbert, it’s a night he will remember for the rest of his life, he said:
That is one of the fondest memories that I’ll have and one of the most terrifying moments. Can you imagine? I remember, leading up to that second, ‘till that very second, I thought, 'I might have the shortest late-night career.' I don't see them giving us a second show if that happened on the first show.
Not only did The Late Show with Stephen Colbert get a second show, it ended up getting about 1,800 of them. The host has admitted there’s a bit of relief mixed in with all of the emotions of the show’s cancellation, but after all the memories he’s formed over the past decade-plus with his crew and writers — like the one he told above — it’s no wonder that it's the people that he’s going to miss the most.
Tune into The Late Show’s final episodes, airing at 11:35 p.m. ET weekdays on CBS.
