On Sunday night, the cancelled The Late Show with Stephen Colbert won the Emmy for Outstanding Talk Series.
Colbert and team members received a standing ovation as they walked onto the stage to accept the award.
“In September 2025, my friends, I have never loved my country more desperately,” Colbert told the audience.
In July 2025, CBS announced that the show’s cancellation is “purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night. It is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.” Others speculate it may have been a politically motivated decision.
Rather than play it safe, The Late Show has become more provocative than ever, especially in its segments about President Trump—“essentially daring his bosses to kill the show sooner,” as TIME’s TV critic Judy Berman wrote earlier this year.
Case in point: Earlier in the show, Colbert jokingly handed his “résumé” to Harrison Ford so he could pass it on to Stephen Spielberg, as he was presenting the Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series.
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