Each episode of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” over the past few weeks has offered a fresh reminder that the end is fast approaching.
Oprah Winfrey stopped by to tell Mr. Colbert that she had to “say goodbye.” Jake Tapper came armed with a parting gift. Billy Crystal sang him a song. The crowd’s ovation gets louder and louder.
“The emotions of the end of the show are growing significantly now,” said Mr. Colbert.
Mr. Colbert’s observation was part of a wide-ranging interview last week in his office above the Ed Sullivan Theater on Broadway. Appearing both relaxed (he was barefoot) but also a bit restless (he occasionally fumbled with an old-school football helmet), he reflected on the upcoming end of “The Late Show” on May 21, as well as his two-decade career as a late-night host. He also talked about how his show had become so relevant, President Trump and what he might do next.
He could be, as he put it, “long-haired” at times. Really. To one question he gave an answer which lasted, with limited interruption, for 18 minutes.
Of course it wasn’t Mr. Colbert’s decision to end “The Late Show.” CBS announced last summer that the network would cancel the show after this season, its 11th, for financial reasons; it was soon widely reported that “The Late Show” was losing tens of millions of dollars a year. Advertising revenue for all late shows has plummeted in recent years, and the number of shows has also fallen.
Still, many have been skeptical of CBS’s explanation. At the time, Paramount, CBS’s parent company, was closing in on a multibillion-dollar merger with film studio Skydance, a deal that required Trump administration approval. Two weeks before the cancellation was announced, Paramount agreed to pay Mr. Trump $16 million to settle a lawsuit over an interview on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” a case many lawyers described as frivolous. Mr. Colbert had been a sharp critic of Mr. Trump for over a decade.
Mr. Colbert said the cancellation had taken him by surprise, though he’s also made light of it.
Here are excerpts from the interview, edited and condensed for length and clarity.
The cancellation
One of the reasons Mr. Colbert found the cancellation surprising, he said, was that CBS was urging him in 2023 to sign a long contract, as long as five years. He ultimately signed a three-year deal.
It’s been nine months since you were told you were cancelled. CBS, of course, claims the show was canceled for financial reasons. Others are skeptical.
I do not dispute their reasoning. I make jokes about it. But I also completely understand why people would say (A) it doesn’t make sense to me and (B) it seems fishy to me because the network did it to itself by bowing the knee to the Trump administration over $20 billion, settling for $16 million, a completely frivolous lawsuit.”
It is possible that two things could be true. Broadcast may be in trouble. They can’t make money from things like YouTube because of the competition from streaming. They’ve got the books and I have no desire to debate them on what they say their business model is and how it’s not working for them anymore. But less than two years before they called to say it was over, they were very keen for me to be signed for a long time. Then something changed.
You said you understand if people assume the cancellation was “fishy”. But where did you settle on that?
I think two things can be true. I’m not saying those two things are true. It doesn’t occur to me, it’s not the “need” for me to spend much time thinking about it. I have no desire to have a contentious relationship with my network. I have really enjoyed working with CBS. They have been good partners. And I’d like to end it like that. Eleven years is a long time to work here. And almost 10 years before that, almost 21 years in total, late at night. I feel so much better being “grateful for” than being “mad about”.
To become current
When Mr. Colbert took over “The Late Show” from David Letterman in 2015, his plan was not to have a reckless current affairs or political show. “We were discouraged by the network from being current,” he said.
It was my instinct to be less current because I didn’t want to have to engage in what I saw was an increasingly contentious public discourse. And I thought, aren’t there other ways to have fun with the audience?
But Mr. Colbert’s first five months on the show were rocky, and soon he began making topical jokes. At the national party conventions in 2016, Mr. Colbert all-in on news and scathing criticism of Mr. Trump, and critics were suddenly writing rave reviews. Higher ratings followed.
The change worked, right?
I was like Clint Eastwood in “Unforgiven” or is that a different movie? He buried his weapons. And I’m like, you know, I buried the damn guns. I talked to Paul Dinello—he’s one of my oldest friends and one of my producers here—and he says, “You’re having fun, and people love to see that.” And I said, “But that means I have to dig up the guns.” And he says, “Honey, this is the part the audience wants to see.”
About the Trump administration
Mr. Trump often criticizes Mr. Colbert and many other late night hosts. On Monday, the president urged Jimmy Kimmel to stay “immediately.” Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has taken great interest in the kind of guests late night hosts invite to their shows.
Why do you think the FCC and the Trump administration are so focused on you?
Authoritarians don’t like anyone who doesn’t give them undue dignity. Comedians are anti-authoritarian by nature. And authoritarians will never like to be laughed at. The number of newspaper people who have said to me or Jon Stewart or any of the guys who do this, “God, I wish I could say what you’re saying on the air.” And we can. I think it disturbs them. I think it can be upsetting that we really don’t live in their world of principalities and powers.
Given that you and other late-night hosts have become political targets, and given how partisan late night has become, do you regret it getting to this point?
I have no problem with Trump being a Republican. I have a problem with Trump being a complete narcissist who only works for his own interest and doesn’t seem to care if the whole world is burning. It is not a partisan position. I have eyeballs and ears, and I think calling late night partisan is just a harshness of the judge. And we don’t even want to be judges, but they perceive us as judges. I reject the partisan description. Partisan means you will never, ever make a joke about a Democrat, and that’s just not true. There is just no comparison to how fertile the fields are.
What’s next?
Here’s what is known: Mr. Colbert, who will turn 62 before his show ends, is working on a script for Warner Bros. for a new “Lord of the Rings” movie. He also shared that he loves a live audience. He likes to host and interview people. He loves podcasts and spends “more time on podcasts than any form of entertainment.” And he wants to “do comedy”. In addition to that, Mr. Colbert unsure of what comes next “because the show takes up 95 percent of my brain.”
So you won’t know until you finish the show?
It takes up all my time so I don’t know. People have called to say, “Do you want to do X, Y or Z?” And I’d be like, “Hey, that’s great. I don’t think I could give you a good answer until I really think about it.” It literally took me years to think enough to write one script. And I thought about it a lot. And I feel good about what we do and I want to feel good about everything I do. So when this is over and I have some time to catch my breath, probably also after turning in the first draft of this thing, I’ll know.
Is there some relief that you don’t have to absorb every single thing in the news cycle, that you don’t have to think about Trump in quite the same way?
Oh, yes. Now I can be as interested as I want to be on a day-to-day basis, as opposed to as interested as I need to be to do a show that’s about what our national conversation was about. I may opt out of the national conversation for a day or two. I mean, I’m American. I still care about my country. I still won’t care, but I can do it recreationally, you know, or privately.
