After a final bittersweet few weeks with guests ranging from a president to rock royalty, late-night peers to all-star friends, Stephen Colbert and his Emmy-winning team of producers saved some surprises for the franchise finale of The Late Show. Colbert is bringing down the curtain on the venerable late-night show, which launched in 1992 under the stewardship of David Letterman, on May 21.
Colbert took the reins in 2015 and hosted 1,800 episodes up until tonight.
Among the guests over the past two weeks: President Barack Obama, Letterman, the “Strike Force Five” late-night hosts (Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver), Jon Stewart, Steven Spielberg, and David Byrne. The penultimate show featured Bruce Springsteen and cameos from Billy Crystal, Robert De Niro, Weird Al Yankovic, Josh Brolin, Martha Stewart, Jeff Daniels, Aubrey Plaza, James Taylor, and John Dickerson. To keep the spotlight on Colbert, both Fallon and Kimmel’s shows were dark on Thursday.
Colbert’s swan song, which featured a top-secret rundown and tight security, began with a rousing standing ovation from the crowd. Paul McCartney was among the guests, returning to the Ed Sullivan Theatre stage, where The Beatles famously launched their conquest of the U.S. McCartney had previously guested on Letterman’s incarnation of the show in 2009 and visited Colbert in 2019.
“The Joy Machine”
Colbert opened by acknowledging the audience. “I just want to let all you all know, in here and out there, how important you’ve been to what we have done. The energy that you’ve given us, we sincerely need that to have done the best possible show we could have for you for the last 11 years.
“This show has been a joy for us to do for you. In fact, we call this show ‘The Joy Machine.’ We call it The Joy Machine because to do this many shows it has to be a machine. But the thing is, if you choose to do with joy, it doesn’t hurt as much when your fingers get caught in the gears.
“I cannot adequately explain to you what the people who work here have done for each other, and how much we mean to each other,” he continued.
Colbert then noted the history of the theater. “We’ve been honored to have been just a small part of it,” he said. “Nichols and May played on the stage. The Beatles made their American debut here, and, backstage, Elvis used the bathroom and didn’t die.”
The guests
Among the celeb cameos were Bryan Cranston, Tim Meadows, Ryan Reynolds, Tig Notaro, and Paul Rudd (who brought the “traditional retirement gift” of six bananas), along with Colbert’s original bandleader, Jon Batiste.
Finally, McCartney came out. “I was just in the area, I was doing some errands,” he joked before presenting Colbert with a framed photo of The Beatles playing The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. “We had never been to America. We come here, and we people said this is like the biggest show,” McCartney recounted of that historic night. “It was fantastic.”
CBS canceled The Late Show program on July 17, 2025, allegedly due to a “financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night.” The network gave the comedian almost a full year to end the show on his own terms, and that’s exactly what he’s doing. After winning the Emmy Award for Best Variety Talk Series in September, Colbert guest-starred on Elsbeth and announced he was writing a new Lord of the Rings movie.
