The cancelation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert emerged last week like a dagger through the heart of late-night.
Would others be next? How would Colbert’s friends fare if the most-watched show in late-night can be axed for “financial reasons”?
Well, they turned up for him, literally.
Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, John Oliver, Jon Stewart and Andy Cohen all appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Monday. They were joined by a slew of other stars including Adam Sandler, Anderson Cooper, Weird Al Yankovic, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Robert Smigel.
The gag started with Miranda and Weird Al coming out to perform a song – a Coldplay song, in fact, a reference to the Astronomer scandal, which saw the CEO resigning after getting caught with the HR chief on a kiss-cam at a recent concert from Chris Martin’s band.
As they were playing, the camera zoomed in on the crowd, which saw Cooper and Cohen pretending to make out, Fallon and Meyers drinking beers, Oliver and Stewart giving the middle finger and Sandler and his Happy Gilmore co-star Chris McDonald sitting in front of Smigel.
However, Colbert had to stop the song prematurely and was handed an official letter. “It says here this is purely a financial decision,” he said. “What does that mean,” replied Miranda. “Since you started playing that song, the network has lost, and I don’t know how this is possible, $40M-$50M,” joked Colbert.
Miranda pointed out that the tune was a number one song, noting that it makes no sense to cancel something that is number one.
Given that the last “celebrity” in the crowd was a cartoon Donald Trump, seemingly drawn in the style of the Colbert-produced Tooning Out The News, Miranda said, “Tell me this has nothing to do with who we just put a spotlight on.”
The letter? It was signed “Yours truly, the Paramount family of global entertainment properties and A.I. weapons systems”.
Many in this group are close; Stewart was previously Colbert’s boss at The Daily Show and is an exec producer of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, while others bonded heavily during the writers strike in 2023 with their own Strike Force 5 podcast, which was hosted by Colbert, Fallon, Kimmel, Meyers and Oliver.
Kimmel had a good excuse for not showing up; ignoring the fact that he’s based in LA, whereas the others are all based in New York, he’s been on holiday for some time with a phalanx of guest hosts leading his Jimmy Kimmel Live! show.
The group appeared after Colbert had delivered his own rebuke to President Donald Trump, who was over the moon at the news last week. Colbert opened his show by telling the former host of The Apprentice to “go f*ck yourself.
Earlier in the evening, Stewart had repeated the line when referring to parent company Paramount.
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