The Talk has spent fourteen seasons on CBS so far as the network's return to daytime talk beginning back in 2010, and has already been renewed for one more. Unfortunately for regular viewers, Season 15 will also be the last, as CBS has cancelled the talk show, which will conclude after a decade and a half on the airwaves before the end of the 2024 TV schedule. The cancellation will mark a big change for the network's daytime lineup, but doesn't come as a huge shock after weeks of rumors.
CBS officially broke the news to the cast and crew of The Talk that the show is ending on Friday, April 12, according to Variety. In a joint statement from CBS Entertainment president Amy Reisenbach and CBS Studios prexy David Stapf, they acknowledged that the show "broke new ground when it launched 14 years ago by returning daytime talk to CBS with a refreshing and award-winning format." The statement goes on to say:
It goes without saying that hosting and producing a year-round talk show is no easy task, and we express our sincere gratitude to our amazing hosts Akbar Gbajabiamila, Amanda Kloots, Natalie Morales, Jerry O’Connell and Sheryl Underwood, our executive producer/showrunner Rob Crabbe and the hardworking producing team and crew. We also want to acknowledge our former show hosts and colleagues who contributed throughout the seasons. We truly appreciate the skill, creativity, and dedication everyone involved brought to the show every day. And of course, we thank the numerous guests who appeared, and the millions of viewers who tuned in daily.
There has been plenty of host turnover over the years, but it sounds like the most recent crop of cast members – Akbar Gbajabiamila, Amanda Kloots, Natalie Morales, Jerry O’Connell, and Sheryl Underwood – will return for the final season, which will end in December 2024. Although not too many details are available at the time of writing about what the final batch of episodes will entails beyond a celebration of the series, it's worth noting that the rumors of cancellation had nothing to do with behind-the-scenes drama or conflict.
The rumors began to fly earlier this year with CBS ordering a new soap opera called The Gates, as part of a partnership with the NAACP and P&G Studios. The soap would reportedly center on a wealthy Black family within a gated community and hails from soap opera veteran Michele Val Jean, who wrote thousands of episodes of daytime TV for shows including The Bold and the Beautiful and General Hospital.
While that news back in March was all well and good for soap fans, it did mean that CBS would presumably need to empty a daytime slot already belonging to another show. If that is the reason for The Talk getting the axe, then at least the hosts won't have to deal with a different talk show taking their place.
Of course, the current crop of hosts are relatively new in the grand scheme of the show's fourteen full seasons so far, with Amanda Kloots, Jerry O'Connell, Natalie Morales, and Akbar Gbajabiamila all joining in 2021. Sheryl Underwood is the only host with a tenure in double digits, as she joined The Talk back in Season 2 in 2011 and has remained on board ever since.
The show was created by The Conners star Sara Gilbert in 2010, and originally hosted by Gilbert, Julie Chen, Sharon Osbourne, Leah Remini, Holly Robinson Peete, and Marissa Jaret Winokur. There was a significant amount of buzz around the departures of Chen and Osbourne, as Chen's in 2018 was in the wake of sexual assault allegations against her husband Les Moonves. In 2023, the Big Brother host revealed that she didn't leave The Talk by choice and "felt stabbed in the back." As for Osbourne, she was fired from the show after allegations of racism back in 2021, and she later addressed her sense of "humiliation" about the situation.
There doesn't seem to be any behind-the-scenes drama at The Talk nowadays, so perhaps the show will come to a conflict-free end when the final credits roll in December. Season 15 will premiere on CBS in the fall, for a shorter-than-usual final season set to celebrate the series.
