The final days of “Late Show With Stephen Colbert” have been marked by many tearful goodbyes from friends and heartfelt tributes, but perhaps most notable for fans of the late night genre has been the sincerity imparted by Colbert’s fellow late night hosts as the “Late Show” comes to an end.
In his penultimate week, Colbert assembled Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers and John Oliver for an all-late night hosts night on the show. It was a jovial affair, with jokes aplenty (including digs at CBS) and a big group hug at the end. Later, Kimmel and Fallon’s shows announced they would air reruns opposite Colbert’s final show on Thursday, and Oliver ended Sunday’s “Last Week Tonight” by encouraging viewers to tune into the last-ever “Late Show.”
It’s a sharp contrast to David Letterman’s final “Late Show,” when Jay Leno declined producers’ inquiry into whether Letterman’s late night rival would be interested in appearing. Or Conan O’Brien’s final “Tonight Show,” when he marked a severely abbreviated tenure racked by tension with Leno and NBC brass with a tearful monologue and a celeb-filled rendition of “Freebird” — without any of his late night compatriots.
In its heyday, late night was a competition of champions. You win alone. You lose alone.
Books have been written about the fight to succeed Johnny Carson on “The Tonight Show,” how Letterman felt scorned by the decision to choose Leno over him, and how their feud — sometimes playful, sometimes not — played out over decades between their two shows. But now, as Colbert says goodbye, the environment has changed — and feels diminished by flagging ratings (but not social and YouTube viewership), attacks from the president and the sinking feeling that this might all be going away.
The locked-arm solidarity of Kimmel, Fallon, Meyers and Oliver on Colbert’s couch in his final weeks speaks just as much to the feeling that there’s strength in numbers against the rising tide as it does their genuine friendship.
“The initial lock-arms came with real purpose,” Oliver told TheWrap, explaining how the group launched the “Strike Force Five” podcast in solidarity with their staffs during the writers’ strike. “There was a real utility to it, practically, in terms of keeping the shows off air, trying to protect our staffs the best that we could, and presenting a united front to our various companies.”
The podcast only lasted 12 episodes before the WGA strike was resolved. But that usefulness extended beyond the strike, as late night came under fire.
“Quickly it became clear that actually there was a real utility to it for each other as well, just having a group text where we could make fun of each other, f–k around, say what we’re hearing, because there’s such a narrow group of things that you have in common with such a narrow group of people,” Oliver continued. “The stresses and the stupidity of the job, to have a group text of people who understand exactly what it is, so you don’t even need to explain, it was very, very helpful.”
The “Last Week Tonight” host said the group text was especially helpful last fall, when Kimmel was pulled off the air amid pressure from the Trump administration and right-wing media. But if you’re thinking the Strike Force Five group chat is a warm hug, think again.
“I cannot overstate the extent to which it is mainly making fun of each other,” Oliver clarified with a laugh. “You want someone f–king around on the text, you don’t want sincerity from comedians. You want someone making fun of the pain that you’re in in a way that will slightly dilute that pain for a second.”
It helps that Fallon, Meyers, Colbert and Oliver all started their shows around the same time, and Meyers previously told TheWrap that this always felt like a “warmer” era in contrast to the previous late night regime.
That barbed warmth has appeared in how the remaining members of the Strike Force Five have dealt with Colbert’s impending conclusion. Kimmel criticized Paramount+ subscribers for not canceling their memberships like Disney+ subscribers did when he was suspended, before joking that no one had the streamer “in the first place.” In a recent episode of the podcast, Fallon asked Colbert what CBS was getting him for his birthday on May 13 and they all laughed a little too hard. During his routine for the NBCUniversal upfronts, Meyers introduced himself before adding “or as the FCC calls me: ‘Next.’”
But to some, the camaraderie between this group of late night hosts underlines the shakiness of the format — CBS canceled “The Late Show” despite it being the ratings winner of the bunch, and NBC scrapped Meyers’ band in budget cuts. The networks are struggling with lower ad revenue amid linear’s overall decline, even as YouTube and social views for these shows are on the rise.
“Part of me kind of hates it, because I think the one thing about the bitter rivalry of the late night wars of both the ’90s and the aughts is that it suggests that something really important was at stake,” said Jason Zinoman, culture critic for the New York Times and author of “Letterman: The Last Giant of Late Night.”
“There’s something really dramatic about competition and rivalry, and if you look at the history of entertainment, you almost need it to draw eyeballs,” he added, pointing even to the Drake vs. Kendrick Lamar beef. But Zinoman added that he understands the solidarity is “a product of the political moment,” ultimately calling it “a cool thing.”
In a crossover between the two regimes, Letterman joined Colbert for one of his final shows to throw chairs from the Ed Sullivan theater off the roof. In the closing moment of the segment, Letterman looked into the camera and said to CBS, “Good night and good luck, motherf–kers.”
The post Late Night Used to Be a Bloodsport. Colbert’s Exit Shows It’s Now a Group Project appeared first on TheWrap.
