He’s heading home.
Photo: Scott Kowalchyk/CBS
Next week, The Late Show will air new episodes for the last time on CBS, leaving Byron Allen to lead the network’s late-night slot with Comics Unleashed instead. And so Stephen Colbert’s viking funeral begins. After a full year of momentous bookings, including recent killer bits like Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s Selina Meyer invocation, the final week with kick off with an episode called “The Worst of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.” CBS clarified that this will not be a clip show but have some other self-effacing format. Tuesday will feature Colbert’s former Daily Show boss Jon Stewart, director Steven Spielberg, and a special performance from the Talking Heads’ David Byrne and Colbert. On Wednesday, the penultimate show, Colbert himself will take The Colbert Questionert with some special guests. Typically hosted by Colbert himself, the Questionert is a popular segment from the show; it was most recently taken by President Barack Obama. Bruce Springsteen will perform.
The network is being pretty vague about the Thursday show, noting only that it is “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert Series Finale.” Colbert has already laid down the gauntlet for whom he wants his final guest to be. As an avowed Catholic, he wants Pope Leo XIV. “The pope is my white whale,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “I wrote him. I said, ‘Come on!’ No, I said, ‘Your Holiness, I hope this letter finds you well or, at the very least, infallible. Would you please come on my show? We don’t have to talk about politics.’” With no guests announced, it seems entirely possible that this Catholic boy will get his wish.
