CBS announced last July that Colbert’s talk show will finish its 11-year run this month.

Stephen Colbert reveals how he would have liked to end The Late Show if he’d decided to leave

CBS announced last July that Colbert's talk show will finish its 11-year run this month.

By Derek Lawrence

Derek Lawrence

Derek Lawrence is a former associate editor at **. He left EW in 2022.

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May 6, 2026 12:51 p.m. ET

Stephen Colbert on 'The Late Show'. Credit:

Scott Kowalchyk/CBS/Getty

- Stephen Colbert opened up about wrapping his tenure on *The Late Show*.

- The host wishes he could have decided when he ended his run on the show.

- However, the late-night host added that he doesn't see the point of being mad about CBS canceling it.

Stephen Colbert thinks the end of *The Late Show* would look a lot different if he'd been the one who decided to end his run on it.

Last summer, CBS made the shocking decision to cancel the iconic late-night series, revealing that it and Colbert would sign off for good in May 2026. Now, as his final show on May 21 approaches, Colbert has revealed what his preferred swan song would have been.

"I mean, a lot like this — I'd just be a little older," he told *The Hollywood Reporter* in its new cover story. "And it would have been my choice, and I probably would have known what the final show was going to be a little bit earlier. On *The Colbert Report*, I picked that day — I didn't tell anybody, but I knew two years ahead of time. Well, we didn't pick this day. We know what it'll be now, but it took a few months."

"But maybe they gave me a gift," he added, "because I had a lot of jokes I could make about the end of the show, and if I'd decided to end the show, then I'm the bad guy — hard to make jokes about that."

In its July 2025 statement announcing the end of the show's historic 33-year run, CBS said, "We consider Stephen Colbert irreplaceable and will retire *The Late Show *franchise at that time. We are proud that Stephen called CBS home. He and the broadcast will be remembered in the pantheon of greats that graced late-night television."

CBS added that the surprising move was "purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night." Reports have suggested that the network was losing upwards of $40 million a year on the production. Many skeptics, however, have pointed to Skydance Media acquiring Paramount Global, the parent company of CBS, as a cause, saying the new leadership wanted to stay out of the crossfire of President Donald Trump.

Former *Late Show* host David Letterman recently claimed that Colbert was "dumped" so that he didn't make any more "trouble" for the network. "I'm just going to go on record as saying: They're lying," Letterman declared in a *New York Times* interview on Tuesday. "Let me just add one other thing... They're lying weasels."

For his part, Colbert doesn't see the upside of being angry with CBS' decision at this point. "All I want to do is go have fun for an audience that appreciates it, and that's what my goal has been for 10 months," he told *The Hollywood Reporter*. "When this is all over, I will probably have a different — or rather a fuller — perspective on all of this, but I don't really have time to be mad about anything right now."

The final episode of *The Late Show* airs May 21 on CBS.

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Source: “EW Talk”