Hugh Jackman sang a parody of Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline.” Bette Midler performed a satirical version of “Wind Beneath My Wings.” John Lithgow wrote and recited a poem called “The Mighty Colbert.” Jake Tapper personally delivered a painting of Colbert as Gollum from The Lord of the Rings. And Jimmy Fallon offered a pointed twist on Frank Sinatra’s “My Way”: “And now the end is near / And so you face the final curtain / But Trump, he made it clear / He wants you gone / Of that we’re certain.”
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In recent months, a long list of celebrities have made pilgrimages to the Ed Sullivan Theatre in New York to join an extended farewell to CBS’s The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. They’re honoring a voice that will be deeply missed from the national conversation when the lights go out on May 21.
Colbert, 62, has been a nightly comfort for millions of viewers who feel disoriented after another day in Donald Trump’s dystopia. He cut through the toxic chaos to reassure them that no, they weren’t going crazy—the world around them was. And he offered a contrast in character: where Trump is vain, Colbert is irreverent; where Trump is narcissistic, Colbert shows empathy; where Trump is indecent, Colbert is decent to the core.
When CBS announced last July that The Late Show would be canceled—ending a 33-year TV institution first hosted by David Letterman and then Colbert—many found the timing suspicious. The decision came just three days after Colbert used his monologue to mercilessly mock a $16 million legal settlement between CBS’s parent company, Paramount, and Trump—and just a week before federal regulators approved Paramount’s $8 billion merger with Skydance.
CBS claimed it was “purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night.” But Letterman, for one, isn’t buying it. “I’m just going to go on record as saying: They’re lying,” he told the New York Times earlier this month. “They’re lying weasels.”
For a generation, late-night TV was ruled by Johnny Carson on NBC. Carson retired in 1992; a year later, CBS launched The Late Show with Letterman as host (it has now outlasted Carson’s version of The Tonight Show). Colbert took over the desk in 2015, after playing a bombastic, right-wing blowhard on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report.
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Stephen Colbert with guest Ian McKellen. Photograph: CBS Photo Archive/CBS/Getty Images
Bill Carter, author of four books about TV, including The Late Shift, says: “I thought he was brilliant almost beyond description in his previous late-night show. It was like nothing anyone had ever done. He was essentially doing a sketch for nine years. It was satire at such a high level.”
Carter wasn’t surprised when Colbert got the Late Show job and recalls interviewing him about it. “I said, you must be looking forward to this because you just get to be yourself, and he said something like, well, you know, I’m not sure yet, it’s going to be different.
“And sure enough, he was thrown off balance when he started. I remember thinking he didn’t look comfortable at all. He really struggled and was definitely on the ropes. He was disappointing management, and I think Les Moonves, who was running CBS at the time, basically gave Stephen an ultimatum: you’ve got to get this thing working.”
And he did, with help from two men in 2016. First, there was Chris Licht, a producer with a background in news rather than entertainment, brought in by Moonves as showrunner. Under his guidance, Colbert stopped trying to be a traditional host and leaned into his satirical intellect.
Carter comments: “He focused more on politics. He gave himself a voice and got better and better at being a monologist, which was something he had never done; he had been a sketch performer his whole life. Once heHe started to get it—he really got it. He’s a very smart guy with great comedic instincts. I was happy for him that he figured it out, and he went on to have the highest ratings in late night.
Second, and even more unlikely, was Trump. His rise in politics changed everything. Every night, Colbert delivered a perfectly crafted mini-state-of-the-nation address—sharp, biting, witty, and redemptive—complete with his own impression of Trump’s voice. Future historians trying to make sense of this era could do a lot worse than study those monologues. For a comedian finding his true voice, the 45th and 47th president was the ultimate spark.
Stephen Farnsworth, co-author of Late Night With Trump: Political Humor and the American Presidency, says: “If late-night comedy wanted to create a perfect target, it would look just like Donald Trump. You’re talking about someone who is an incredibly rich source of material for late-night humor—his bluster, his demeanor, his inconsistency, his aggressiveness—all of these things create a perfect environment for mockery. The Arc de Trump, ingesting bleach, claiming an election he lost wasn’t really lost. This is a through-the-looking-glass moment in American politics.”
This marked a shift from Carson’s gentler, mostly apolitical humor. But in a recent New York Times interview, Colbert rejected the idea that late-night hosts have become politically partisan. He said: “I don’t have any problem with Trump being a Republican. I have a problem with Trump being a complete narcissist who only works for his own interests and doesn’t seem to care if the whole world burns. That’s not a partisan stance. I have eyes and ears, and calling late-night partisan is just roughing the ref. We don’t even want to be refs, but they see us that way. I reject that label. Partisan means you never, ever make a joke about a Democrat, and that’s just not true. There’s just no comparison in how fertile the fields are.”
Colbert offered more than just mockery. His monologues had a moral anchor—they despaired of Trump but never of America. There were sensitive interviews with everyone from Anderson Cooper to John Oliver, from Bernie Sanders to Neil deGrasse Tyson. He referenced his Catholic faith, showed no bitterness about being fired, and had a recurring segment with his wife, Evie McGee Colbert, that was like an ad for how a marriage can age beautifully.
David Litt, an author and former speechwriter for Barack Obama, says: “He’s been an important satirical voice, but I actually think he’s also been an important moral voice. We’re not living in particularly kind times, and Colbert always had a strong point of view—that’s why Trump worked so hard to get him canceled. But he also seemed to have a fundamental kindness and generosity. One thing I remember most is his interview with Joe Biden, where they both talked about the tragedies they’d experienced and what grief meant to them. That’s a hard conversation to imagine happening on late-night TV in general. Colbert could pull it off, and I don’t know how many others could. That’s not a criticism of them; it’s just saying he had a unique ability to be human.”
Colbert was 10 years old when his father and two of his brothers died in a plane crash. He brought a unique emotional honesty to late-night TV. Carter observes: “As Johnny Carson once said, if you do this show long enough, who you are comes out and becomes clear to people. That’s true of Stephen. He’s a very human guy, a very deep guy, and he suffered a terrible loss as a child that shaped him. People who watch these late-night shows like seeing the human side of him. If they’re going to spend time with him regularly, they want to know who he really is.”Yet this deep connection with audiences, the highest ratings in late night, and last year’s Emmy for outstanding talk series weren’t enough to save Colbert from becoming collateral damage in Trump’s full-frontal assault on US democracy.
Trump had sued Paramount over a 60 Minutes interview with Vice-President Kamala Harris. Critics widely saw the settlement as an attempt to clear hurdles before Paramount’s planned sale to Skydance Media — a merger that needed approval from the Trump administration. Colbert didn’t hold back, saying on air that the legal term for the deal was a “big fat bribe.” He added, “I don’t know if anything — anything — will repair my trust in this company. But, just taking a guess, I’d say $16 million would help.”
Trump’s response to The Late Show ending was quick and vengeful. On his Truth Social platform, he wrote: “I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert!” Kimmel was indeed taken off the air by ABC for a week and has recently faced renewed attacks.
Late-night TV has been under economic pressure for years. Ratings and ad revenue are down, and many young viewers prefer highlights online, which networks struggle to monetize. Even so, Carter is among those who doubt CBS’s reasons for ending Colbert’s show.
He says: “They’ve said it had nothing to do with politics. At some point you have to say, come on folks, we’ve seen the president attacking these people and doing everything he can to get them off the air. And they needed government approval to complete their sale. It’s not hard to connect the dots.”
The Late Show will be replaced by Comics Unleashed, a syndicated talk show where stand-up comedians joke with host Byron Allen. Carter sees this move as effectively waving a white flag for late-night TV. “They’re telling the public: we’re not going to try this anymore. We’re not going to have an entertainment show at 11:30 with a star who is a signature figure and basically the face of the network.”
Farnsworth warns of a chilling effect. He says: “It’s been a tough environment for late-night comedy because of growing commercial pressures. You have a situation where Kimmel is regularly under attack, and questions about ABC’s license renewals and demands to take him off the air come up from time to time.
“You also have growing conservative ownership of key media properties and a rising willingness to use the FCC as a weapon to reduce criticism of the president. That creates a very difficult environment for media companies. But there’s still room for more combative content away from the TV networks, on cable.”
Farnsworth speculates this could be Colbert’s next move. “There may be a third act for Colbert, but it’s not clear yet what form it might take. There’s certainly an audience that would follow him if he went to HBO or somewhere else. So we’ll have to see where he gets the best offers.”
The JRR Tolkien superfan is already working on a script for Warner Bros for a new Lord of the Rings film. And in a recent interview filmed at Barack Obama’s new presidential center in Chicago, Colbert said: “How dumb do you think it is for people to say I should run for president?”
Obama replied: “The bar has changed. Let me put it this way: I think you could perform significantly better than some folks we’ve seen. I have great confidence in that.”
Colbert thanked Obama and asked if this was a formal endorsement. “It was not,” the 44th president said.A Colbert presidential campaign would be no more ridiculous than Trump’s, who was previously a reality TV star on The Apprentice. “Colbert is a thoughtful, smart man who hasn’t had 20 women accusing him of sexual misconduct or anything like that. He has enough qualifications to run for president: he’s intelligent, excellent on TV, and so on. He’s a very talented person.”
Carter adds: “I don’t think he wants to retire. He hasn’t said anything about that. If he has a plan, I haven’t heard about it. There are many things he could do, from working on cable to hosting a podcast like Conan O’Brien, or even Broadway. Why couldn’t he do a one-man show? He’s very skilled and can do whatever he wants, but I think he mostly wanted to keep doing what he was doing, so that’s a shame.”
Frequently Asked Questions
Here is a list of FAQs based on the headline He had a unique ability to be human latenight TV says goodbye to Stephen Colbert
BeginnerLevel Questions
1 Is Stephen Colbert actually leaving The Late Show
No the headline is misleading It refers to a specific moment in latenight TV historylikely a tribute or a farewell to a guest or a segmentnot Colbert himself leaving his show
2 What does unique ability to be human mean in this context
It means that Stephen Colbert is praised for being authentic vulnerable and relatable on screen rather than just telling jokes or staying in a character He shows real emotions like sadness or joy which makes him feel genuine to viewers
3 Who said goodbye to Stephen Colbert in this article
The article is about other latenight hosts or a major guest paying tribute to Colbert They are saying goodbye to him after a shared moment or a special episode
4 Why would latenight TV say goodbye to someone who isnt retiring
Goodbye here is a figure of speech It could mean the end of a longrunning segment a heartfelt sendoff to a colleague leaving the network or a tribute after a major event
AdvancedLevel Questions
5 Is this headline referencing a specific event like the end of a show or a character
Yes it likely refers to the conclusion of a major storyline or a longterm bit on Colberts show Alternatively it could be about a fellow latenight host leaving the industry and Colbert was the focus of their farewell tribute
6 How does Colberts ability to be human differ from his earlier persona on The Colbert Report
On The Colbert Report he played a satirical overthetop conservative pundit His human side was hidden behind the character On The Late Show he dropped that persona showing real reactions crying during emotional interviews and admitting when hes wronga stark contrast to his earlier work
7 What does this headline imply about the state of latenight TV today
It suggests that audiences now value authenticity over
