Seth Meyers reflected on the untimely death of The Late Show, describing it as a “very sad week for television in America.” Speaking to Deadline ahead of the Thursday night finale of Stephen Colbert’s late-night show, Meyers offered his thoughts on what it means for the TV landscape.
“I’m heartbroken,” Meyers said. “It’s very sad to lose a colleague and even sadder to lose a time slot. It would be one thing if Stephen was leaving and a younger person was getting a chance to have one of these jobs that are—as someone who’s experienced it—so exciting to have. So just in general, I think it’s a very sad week for television in America.”
Instead of replacing Colbert, CBS is pulling the plug on The Late Show entirely. The network will be essentially
renting out the show’s former time slot to Comics Unleashed with Byron Allen. Colbert is moving on co-write the screenplay for the next Lord of the Rings movie, titled The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past.
“I’m also very optimistic that Stephen’s next chapter is going to be exciting for him and for the rest of us,” Meyers added. “I think he’s been slow-playing this as what his next step was going to be for years and I’m very excited it’s going to happen.”
Meyers recently made a final appearance on The Late Show. Meyers, Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, and John Oliver joined Colbert on the show last week for a reunion of Strike Force Five, a podcast the five late-night hosts launched during the 2023 writers strike. The hosts sat down for a lengthy discussion on the state of late-night TV.
Colbert noted, “You guys started before I did. Each of your shows you’re doing started before this show. And then you’re going to be here after I’m here. You’re like the candy shell, I’m like the nougat filling, and then somebody came in and just sucked it out.”
Last year, Meyers acknowledged that hosting Late Night was a tenuous business. During an appearance on Armchair Expert, the host admitted that he had thought being cancelled himself. “I would worry about myself mental health-wise,” he said. “But I put a lot of thought into diversifying my skill set. Certainly, financially, I could have been fine just doing the show for the last eleven years. But then it was like, ‘Oh, you know what? I feel like there’s something to trying to build a stand-up career and trying to do other things.’”
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