Stephen Colbert has always felt support from former late night host Conan O’Brien.
“Conan is the patron saint of ex-talk show hosts,” Colbert, 61, told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview published on Monday, March 9. “He’d actually been telling me to quit for years. We were out, a few Emmys ago, and he kept saying, ‘I want you to know there’s a lot of fun to be had when this is over, so don’t feel like you need to stay.’”
Colbert continued, “It almost hurt my feelings, but he was just being kind. He Dutch uncle’d me.”
O’Brien, for his part, was chosen to succeed David Letterman as host of Late Night in 1993, a role he held until 2009. He went on to briefly host The Tonight Show before Jay Leno returned. O’Brien then launched Conan on TBS in 2010, and the show ran for 11 seasons until 2021.
Colbert, meanwhile, has been at the helm of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert since 2015. News broke in July 2025 that the show would be coming to an end in May 2026.
CBS noted in a statement at the time that the decision was purely “financial” and wasn’t “related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount,” adding, “We are proud that Stephen called CBS home.”
“Before we start the show I want to let you know something that I found out just last night. Next year will be our last season,” Colbert announced during a taping in July 2025 as the audience booed. “I share your feelings. It’s not just the end of our show, but it’s the end of The Late Show on CBS. I’m not being replaced. This is all just going away.”
He continued, “I do want to say that the folks at CBS have been great partners. … And I’m grateful to the audience, you, who have joined us every night, in here, out there and all around the world.”
Months later, Colbert shared that he found out the news from his and fellow late night host Jimmy Kimmel’s manager, James “Baby Doll” Dixon, after returning from a vacation.
“He said, ‘Hey, baby, I just need to talk to you for 15 minutes after the show on Wednesday,’” Colbert shared on a September 2025 episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live! “This was on the 16th of July. Five minutes on the phone with Baby Doll is an hour, so 15 minutes in person, what the hell is this about? So I say to [my wife] Evie, ‘I’ll be home a little bit later. I got to talk to Baby.’ I come home two and a half hours later, and I walk into the apartment, and she goes, ‘What happened? You get canceled?’ I said, ‘Yes, I did.’”
One day later, Colbert shared the update with his staff, studio audience and live viewers after recording the show.
“I was so nervous about doing it right because there was nothing on the [tele]prompter,” he recalled. “I was just speaking off the cuff. … I f***ed up twice and had to restart. The audience thought it was a bit, and they started going, ‘You can do it!’”
