Each episode of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” over the past few weeks has offered a fresh reminder that the final one is rapidly approaching.
Oprah Winfrey swung by to tell Mr. Colbert that she needed to “say goodbye.” Jake Tapper came armed with a farewell gift. Billy Crystal sang him a song. The audience ovations are getting louder and louder.
“The feelings of the show ending are growing significantly now,” Mr. Colbert said.
Mr. Colbert’s observation was part of 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 fidgeted with an old-school football helmet), he reflected on the coming end of “The Late Show” on May 21, as well as his two-decade career as a late-night host. He also spoke about how his show had become so topical, President Trump and what he might do next.
He could be, as he put it, “long-winded” at times. Indeed. For one question, he gave an answer that lasted, with limited interruption, for 18 minutes.
Of course, it was not 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-night 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 a multibillion-dollar merger with the movie studio Skydance, a deal that required the Trump administration’s 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 suit that many lawyers described as meritless. Mr. Colbert had been a sharp critic of Mr. Trump for over a decade.
Mr. Colbert said the cancellation had surprised him, though he has made light of it, too.
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 encouraged 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 learned that you were canceled. CBS obviously claims that the show was canceled for financial reasons. Others are skeptical.
I do not dispute their rationale. I do make jokes about it. But I also completely understand why people would say (A) that doesn’t make sense to me and (B) that seems fishy to me, because the network did it to themselves by bending the knee to the Trump administration over a $20 billion, settled for $16 million, completely frivolous lawsuit.”
It’s possible that two things can be true. Broadcast can be in trouble. They cannot monetize because of things like YouTube, because of the competition of streaming. They’ve got the books, and I do not have any desire to debate them over what they say their business model is and how it does not work for them anymore. But less than two years before they called to say it’s over, they were very eager for me to be signed for a long time. So, something changed.
You said that you understand if people make the assumption that the cancellation was “fishy.” But where have you settled out on this?
I believe two things can be true. I’m not saying the two things are true. It behooves me not, it ain’t “behoovy” for me, to spend a lot of time thinking about that. I have zero desire to have a contentious relationship with my network. I’ve really liked working with CBS. They’ve been great partners. And I’d like to end it that way. Eleven years is a long time to work here. And almost 10 years before that, almost 21 years altogether, in late night. I feel so much better to be “grateful for” than to be “mad about.”
Becoming Topical
When Mr. Colbert took over “The Late Show” from David Letterman in 2015, his plan was not to have a ruthlessly topical or political show. “We were discouraged by the network from being topical,” he said.
It was my instinct to be less topical, because I didn’t want to have to engage with 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 opening five months on the show were rocky, and soon he started doing topical jokes. By the 2016 national party conventions, Mr. Colbert went all-in on news and biting 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 it some other movie? He buried his guns. And I’m like, you know, I buried those damn guns. I was talking to Paul Dinello — he’s one of my oldest friends and one of my producers here — and he’s like, “You’re having fun, and people love to see that.” And I said, “But that means I got to go dig up the guns.” And he says, “Buddy, that’s the part the audience wants to see.”
On the Trump Administration
Mr. Trump frequently criticizes Mr. Colbert and many other late-night hosts. On Monday, the president called for Jimmy Kimmel to be “immediately fired.” Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has taken a keen interest in the sort of guests late-night hosts invite on their shows.
Why do you think the F.C.C. and the Trump administration are so focused on you?
Authoritarians don’t like anybody who doesn’t give them undue dignity. Comedians are anti-authoritarian by nature. And authoritarians are never going to like anybody to laugh at them. The number of newspeople who have said to me or Jon Stewart or any of the guys who do this, “God, I wish I could say what you say on air.” And we can. I think that upsets them. I think it might be upsetting that we really do not 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 have any regrets that it’s gotten to this point?
I don’t have any problem with Trump being a Republican. I have a problem with Trump being a complete narcissist who is only working for his own interest and does not appear to care if the entire world burns. That’s not a partisan position. I have eyeballs and ears, and I think calling late night partisan is just roughing the ref. And we don’t even want to be refs, but they perceive us as refs. I reject the partisan description. Partisan means you’re never, ever going to make a joke about a Democrat, and that’s just not true. There’s just no comparison of how fertile the fields are.
What’s Next?
Here is 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 being a host and interviewing people. He loves podcasts and spends “more time with podcasts than any form of entertainment.” And he wants “to do comedy.” Beyond that, Mr. Colbert was uncertain about what’s coming next “because the show takes like 95 percent of my brain.”
So you won’t know until you’re done with the show?
It takes all my time, so I don’t know. People have called to say, “Do you want to do X, Y or Z?” And I would say, like: “Hey, that’s great. I don’t think I could give you a good answer until I can really think about it.” It literally took me years to think enough about writing one script. And I put a lot of thought into it. And I feel good about what we’re doing, and I want to feel that good about everything I do. So when this is over and I have a little time to breathe, probably after turning in the first draft, too, of this thing, I’ll know then. Is there some relief that you’re not going to have to absorb every single thing in the news cycle, that you’re not going to have to think about Trump in quite the same way?
Oh, yeah. Now I can be as interested as I want to be on a daily basis, as opposed to as interested as I need to be to do a show that is about what our national conversation was about. I can opt out of the national conversation for a day or two. I mean, I’m an American. I still care about my country. I’m still going to care, but I can do that recreationally, you know, or privately.
John Koblin covers the television industry for The Times.
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