Stephen Colbert’s plans for after The Late Show ends in May may include a familiar character.
During the host’s big “exit interview” with GQ, Colbert revealed he has a “whole show” planned around his former right-wing Colbert Report persona. “It was actually going to involve that old character in a new job, and he would be like a central figure, but he wouldn’t be the only character in it,” he told the magazine. “And I might still do it someday, but that was my plan. And then taking over for Letterman fell on my lap.”
The series idea was his contingency plan should Colbert Report end suddenly—but with the end of The Late Show drawing to its conclusion in the spring, it may be a possibility once again.
Colbert left the fictional conservative “Colbert” behind after nine years to take over The Late Show from David Letterman in 2015. At the time, he told CBS News, “It’s really nice not to have to pretend it any more” to be a right-wing newsman. The character first appeared on The Daily Show in 1997.
He’s brought back the old character periodically through the years, however. Most recently he used the right-wing character to rip Trump over his targeting of Jimmy Kimmel. “You can have your rights just as long as you don’t use them,” right-wing Colbert said. “All you have to do is repeat whatever the approved message from the White House is today” and “balance your rights with your duty not to make the commander-in-chief fill his Depends with tears.”
Colbert was interviewed by GQ before Jimmy Kimmel was suspended and then reinstated for his comments about the late conservative podcaster Charlie Kirk, following threats from Donald Trump’s FCC Chair. Trump gloated during Kimmel’s brief six-day hiatus, surmising he’d added another late-night host to his list of dealt-with enemies just after Colbert’s firing.
Paramount insisted The Late Show ended for “purely financial” reasons, though many believe his axing was a fealty move for Trump, to whom the company had just forked over $16 million to settle his 60 Minutes lawsuit. As Trump’s administration approved the company’s $8 billion merger with Skydance shortly thereafter, and Colbert had called the payment “a big fat bribe” on air days before his show was canceled, the network’s decision to shutter the long-running late-night franchise drew more speculation about a politically motivated arrangement.
Colbert told GQ that “people can have their theories” about why the show was canceled, but “that’s not my reaction to it.”
“I have my feelings about not doing the show anymore, but you’d have to show me why that’s a fruitful relationship for me to have with my network for the next nine months, for me to engage in that speculation.” That said, he added of Paramount’s settlement with Trump, “it is unclear to me why anyone would do that other than to curry favor with a single individual.”
Though he has some ideas about what could come next—like bringing back his Colbert Report character—he’s most focused on getting his last shows right. “I just want to land this plane gracefully in a way that I find satisfying, given how much effort we’ve put into it for the last 10 years.”
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