There were no laughs to be had when word broke that CBS had canceled The Late Show with Stephen Colbert; however, it seems there were plenty of laughs to be had by the studio audience of the show the day Colbert broke the news of his cancellation to the staff and the world.
In his first interview since his cancellation this July, Stephen Colbert dropped by Jimmy Kimmel Live and the pair did not avoid addressing the elephant in the room. Kimmel asked Colbert about how he came to learn of his cancellation, news he received after returning from vacation
When Colbert’s longtime manager James “Babydoll” Dixon called him up to ask to speak for 15 minutes after the July 16 taping, he knew something was up.
“He says, ‘Hey baby, I need to talk to you for 15 minutes after the show on Wednesday,’ this was on July 16. I’m like, ‘Wow, five minutes on the phone with Babydoll is an hour, so 15 minutes in person, what the hell is this about,’” Colbert recalled. Two and a half hours later, Colbert arrived home and his wife Evelyn McGee-Colbert joked about him taking so long because he was canceled to which Colbert had to break the news to her that yes, that was indeed the case.
“I come home two and a half hours later, I walk into the apartment and [Evelyn] goes, ‘What happened, did you get canceled?’ I said, ‘Yes, I did.’”
Upon learning the news, Colbert was understandably shocked and was in no hurry to break the news to his team on the show.
“The funny thing is, [Evelyn] goes, ‘Well, are you going to tell your staff tomorrow?’ And I said, ‘Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll tell them after the summer break, maybe I’ll tell them in September.’ She goes, ‘You’re going to tell them tomorrow.’ I said, ‘I really don’t think so, I don’t think I’m up for it.’”
She would accompany Colbert to work the following day where he planned to break the news to the full team. Knowing if he broke the news before the taping of the show it would bum everyone out, Colbert opted to only tell his executive producer. After taping the show, Colbert asked the audience to remain seated so he could break the news.
“We couldn’t do a show if I told them, because everybody’d be bummed out and I’d be bummed out. I only told my executive producer Tom Purcell. I didn’t tell anybody else on the show. I did the whole show including the cold open and then when I say good night to the audience, I said, ‘Okay, now nobody leave because we’ve got one more act of the show’ because I wanted to go record at the top of the show that we had been canceled,” Colbert recalled.
After going backstage and telling everyone to get on Zoom so they wouldn’t find out about the news on air, Colbert went back out to the stage to address the audience and share the news. The problem was that he did so unscripted without the help of a Teleprompter, which led to a few missteps which led the audience to believe Colbert was simply doing a bit.
“I was so nervous about doing it right because there was nothing in the prompter, I was just speaking off the cuff, that I f-cked up twice and had to restart. The audience thought it was a bit, and they started going ‘You can do it. Come on Steve. You can do it' because I always messed up on the sentence that told them what was happening.”
Once Colbert finally got through the sentence announcing the cancellation, there was no laughter to be had.
“Then I got to the sentence that actually told them what was happening and they didn’t laugh,” Colbert concluded.
The audience’s reaction honestly is excusable as Colbert is known for his satire, so it’s understandable that the audience believed he was simply doing a bit. No one saw Colbert’s cancellation coming when word broke that CBS was not renewing the show, and it remains a heated point of debate among viewers who aren’t ready to see the show go off the air and question the reasoning behind the decision.