Posted in: CBS, TV | Tagged: colbert, The Late Show

The Late Show Finale Preview: Colbert Ends CBS Late-Night Run Tonight

With Stephen Colbert ending his run on CBS's The Late Show, we preview tonight's finale, including Colbert's final week and much more.

"It's getting much realer – every moment's getting a little more precious. I tried never to take for granted being in the Ed Sullivan [Theater], having a Broadway theater, having that tremendous audience, or having the ability to work with the funniest people I know every day and make jokes about the things that make me most anxious every day. But at the same time, you can't really dwell on that ending because you don't have time for it. Any more than you can think about walking and still walk, or swallowing and not choke on your own tongue. You just have to do the show." Those were some recent thoughts from late-night legend Stephen Colbert, who bids farewell to CBS's The Late Show with Stephen Colbert tonight (at 11:35 pm ET/PT on CBS) after 11 years – and not under the best circumstances. To celebrate one of late-night's biggest influences for nearly 30 years, Bleeding Cool has put together a preview that includes some additional recent insights from Colbert about the end of his run, a look back at what went down during Colbert's final week, and more.

The Late Show: Colbert on Ending Late-Night Run, Offers BTS Look

With that in mind, we're kicking things off with a look at what Colbert had to share recently about "The Late Show" coming to an end, the future of late-night television, his battle with Donald Trump and Paramount Skydance/CBS, and much more – including a great tour of the set by Colbert for Architectural Digest:

The Late Show: A Look Back at Stephen Colbert's Final Week

Here's a look back at Colbert's stellar final week, with the week kicking off with The Worst Of The Late Show, a special episode that shines a light on comedy bits that were too stupid, too messy, and too outrageous to make it onto the show over the past eleven seasons. Colbert rolled out graphics, field pieces, and character sketches that should never have been televised in any form (though we will defend the honor of that Michael Keaton/pigeon idea), culminating in the "worst" musical number in the late-night show's history.

From there, Colbert was honored by fellow late-night bud Jon Stewart, who presented Colbert with a very cool present (after the two spent some quality time ripping into Trump, CBS, and Paramount Skydance), had a chance for a one-on-one with Stephen Spielberg (Disclosure Day), and joined in on a special performance by David Byrne.

And on the eve of Colbert's finale show, the late-night host subjected himself to a special guest-filled edition of "The Colbert Questionert," with John Dickerson, Mark Hamill, Jim Gaffigan, Jeff Daniels, Tiffany Haddish, Evie Colbert, Amy Sedaris, Ben Stiller, Aubrey Plaza, James Taylor, and Robert De Niro on tap to run Colbert through his questions. Following that, Bruce Springsteen entered the scene with a performance of "Streets of Minneapolis":

"I'd like to say to the audience before we go, well, not necessarily to the audience, but to the folks at CBS: In the words of the great Ed Murrow, good night and good luck motherfucker." And with that, late-night icon David Letterman offered his parting words to the network while revisiting one of his classic segments with Colbert: tossing stuff off the roof of a tall building. In this case, it's the Ed Sullivan Theater, and the stuff is CBS property:

Colbert Reunites "Strike Force Five": Fallon, Kimmel, Meyers & Oliver

"I will tell you, when I got knocked off the air for a few days, people canceled Disney+. Why aren't people canceling Paramount+? Because you never had it in the first place?" Colbert reassembled "Strike Force Five" as his guests ahead of his departure: Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver. And as you can tell from that line from Kimmel that we opened up with, the five didn't exactly hold back when it came to their thoughts on Donald Trump, how his FCC has been threatening late-night as a larger attack on free speech, how Paramount Skydance and Disney have tried to play nice with the Trump Administration, and how it's gotten them nowhere, and more – including the current state of late-night. "We have a lot of shows. 30,000 people watching each one, and it adds up. People watch us on YouTube now. People have a lot of different options, and they keep coming to us," Kimmel argued, pushing back on the idea that late-night programming on the networks was dying off.

Colbert asked about Trump – specifically, how each of them has found themselves on the receiving end of social media and press grief from Trump and his lackeys. Kimmel noted how it goes to a whole new level when Melania Trump calls you out. In case you missed it, Melania attempted to connect a joke Kimmel made during his show two days before the shooting at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. "You know what's even weirder? Doing a job that his wife has strong feelings about," Kimmel shared. Oliver followed up by sharing his reaction to learning in their group chat that Melania was making headlines by trying to throw Kimmel under the bus.

"It's an amazing thing to get, in a group text, a text from Jimmy saying, 'Oh, boy.' And then a picture of Melania mad at him," Oliver said. But Meyers had a "silver lining" way of looking at Trump's rants against late-night and wanting all of them fired: at least someone is still watching network television live. "The thing I like, he posts when the show airs, and I want to say I appreciate that he is watching linear television. If I would make my case for late-night, it's that leaders of the free world are watching it when it airs," Meyers offered.

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