Stephen Colbert and David Letterman together in 2024.
Photo: Scott Kowalchyk/CBS via Getty Images
When the jerks are taking over, sometimes the best thing you can do is have fun coming up with increasingly silly ways to ridicule them. That’s what David Letterman does in a May 5 New York Times interview about CBS canceling his former home, The Late Show. For starters, he only refers to the new Paramount boss David Ellison as “the Ellison Twins,” explaining, “I took great delight in referring to the principal as the Ellison Twins. I was later corrected and told it’s just one guy. I didn’t care and I still refer to him as twins.” If it’s not clear already, Letterman is not thrilled that the network canceled The Late Show, which he says feels “like driving by your old neighborhood and realizing that where you used to live, they’re putting up an adult bookstore.” Although over a decade has passed since Letterman’s final Late Show, he told the Times, “If there’s outrage to be directed at management, either real or imagined, I’m all in. Let’s go.”
The outrage centers around CBS claiming that The Late Show was canceled for purely financial reasons and that the decision had nothing to do with appeasing President Donald Trump, whom Stephen Colbert frequently criticizes. Letterman speaks frankly about why he believes it happened this summer, ahead of Ellison purchasing the network. “He was dumped because the people selling the network to Skydance said, ‘Oh no, there’s not going to be any trouble with that guy. We’re going to take care of the show. We’re just going to throw that into the deal. When will the ink on the check dry?’ I’m just going to go on record as saying: They’re lying. Let me just add one other thing,” Letterman said. “They’re lying weasels.”
Colbert has taken a different approach to discussing his show’s untimely death. He’s done a few interviews lately, including one on May 6 with The Hollywood Reporter, in which he is stoically mournful about the whole affair, refusing to claim that the show was canceled solely over politics. “Maybe my cancellation was just a naturally occurring tumor that just had to be cut out of the corporation,” he says. “I mean, that’s entirely possible. I would also say — and this is what feels most true to me — that two things can be true. It can be that the broadcast model is collapsing, and, while we’re at it, as long as we’re collapsing here, what if we shove this one out a window first? I mean, this lamb’s got a very cuttable throat.”
Colbert even talks about going out a company man, recalling a conversation he had with the chair of TV media at Paramount, George Cheeks. “‘I’m not over here grinding a knife, but we are going to make jokes about how this went down and about the $40 million and about CBS’s apparent check-cutting spree to the president,’” Colbert says he told Cheeks. ‘“That’s the show I want to do for ten more months because I like working for CBS and I’m not going to change that relationship between now and the end if you allow that to happen.’” That is a very nice way to approach an employee of those dastardly Ellison Twins.
