Stephen Colbert's final episode as host of The Late Show marked the end of an 11-year run and closed out the long-running CBS late night franchise entirely.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Colbert struggled in his first months after taking over from David Letterman but found his footing around the time of the 2016 political conventions. By 2017, the show had become the most watched program in late-night television. That climb came during a period of intense political tension, and Colbert was frank about his feelings regarding it. "I would trade good ratings for a better president," he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2017. "We were ready for something that galvanized people's attention and changed their priorities. The thank-you note is to my staff for being ready — that's the thank-you note."
He steered the show through the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, moving production to a work-from-home format alongside his audience. He went live on January 6, 2021, responding on air to the Capitol riot as it unfolded. Over his tenure, he also sat for notable interviews with Christopher Nolan, Keanu Reeves, Barack and Michelle Obama, and then-Vice President Joe Biden in 2015, just days into his run as host.
That Biden interview came only three days after Colbert's debut and is regarded as one of the moments that helped define what the show could be. Biden's son Beau had recently died, and Colbert, whose father and two brothers died in a plane crash in 1974, drew on his own history of grief in a two-part conversation about loss and faith.
Before The Late Show, Colbert spent years at The Daily Show and nine years playing a self-described character on The Colbert Report. Looking back on the full run in an exit interview with THR, he was measured about his legacy. "I want to be remembered as a comedy show," he said. "We harvest laughter for a living, and ultimately that's the thing I want more than anything else. I just want to make the audience laugh."
He pushed back on any suggestion that years of political comedy had produced real-world change. "We're not changing the damn world," he said. "Have you seen the world? I promise you, if you think that I'm on some kind of agenda, then I'm really shitty at it because nothing has gone in the direction that I had hoped. I mean, nothing for 25 years."
