Stephen Colbert knew The Late Show was ending long before he actually had to say goodbye. CBS announced the cancellation in July 2025, leaving the host and his staff with months of TV still to make before the final episode aired this past May. That sounds like a strange way to go to work every day. Apparently, the host tried to use that time to appreciate what was still sitting right in front of him before the show ended its milestone run.
Talking to People shortly before his 2026 TV schedule finale, the former CBS host reflected on the months between learning the show was canceled and actually leaving the Ed Sullivan Theater. As Colbert put it:
I tried never to take for granted filming in the Ed Sullivan Broadway theater, having that tremendous audience, or having the ability to work with the funniest people I know every day and make jokes about the things that make me most anxious.
Colbert spent 11 seasons in that theater after succeeding David Letterman in 2015. By the time CBS announced the cancellation, The Late Show was still leading its late-night competition in the ratings. The network maintained that the show’s sudden and shocking cancellation was due to a financial considerations rather than one connected to its performance or longtime talk-show host's political commentary.
Reports suggest the Emmy-winning series had been losing the network millions in recent years. That explanation has remained disputed, however. Some analysts have argued Colbert’s outspoken criticism of CBS and Paramount, including his comments about the company’s $16 million settlement with U.S. President Donald Trump, may have played a role in the decision.
Despite what was happening behind the scenes, Colbert still had a show to make every night. For years, he used The Late Show to process elections, the pandemic, labor strikes and whatever other chaos happened to land before taping. Knowing that routine had an expiration date clearly changed how he looked at those final months. There was another wrinkle to the former Comedy Central host’s outlook before the finale, too. Colbert wondered whether CBS may have accidentally done him a favor.
Making a daily late-night show took an enormous amount out of him, and the comedy veteran acknowledged that ending it while he still had the energy to pursue other things might ultimately prove valuable. He compared producing The Late Show to taking a flaming toboggan down a mountain and trying not to hit a tree before 12:30 every night. That sounds exhausting even before you add monologue rewrites.
The former face of CBS late night did not have some elaborate retirement plan waiting behind the curtain. He talked about writing a Lord of the Rings project with his son, Peter, but otherwise said he needed to finish the show before figuring out what came next. We have since gotten a small look at his post-Late Show life, including increasingly noticeable facial hair, which is already giving me David Letterman retirement flashbacks.
Whatever comes next, though, I like that Colbert spent those final months noticing the small things that would disappear once the lights went out. Eleven seasons is plenty of time for an extraordinary job to start feeling pretty mundane but, apparently, the host never let his place in late-night television history go unappreciated.
