As The Late Show With Stephen Colbert wraps up its last week on air, the show has revealed its final roster of guests and segments. Or, at least, some of it.
On Monday, May 18 (Eastern Time), The Late Show will air “The Worst of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” which, according to Colbert’s team, is “not a clip show!”
For its Tuesday, May 19th episode, guests include Steven Spielberg (who’ll be on to discuss his upcoming sci-fi thriller, Disclosure Day), along with Jon Stewart and David Byrne, the latter of whom will be onstage with Colbert for a special musical performance.
The show’s penultimate episode on Wednesday, May 20, will see Colbert taking “The Colbert Questionert,” with special, unnamed guests asking the questions. After this, Bruce Springsteen will be taking the stage.
Finally, The Late Show’s highly anticipated (and contested) finale will air on Thursday, May 21 at 11:35 p.m. (Eastern Time), although Colbert has yet to announce any of the guests who’ll be joining him onstage one last time. But rest assured that the late night host has something up his sleeve: the last few weeks leading up to the finale have seen guests like Barack Obama, Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, Pedro Pascal, Tom Hanks, and David Letterman all sit across Colbert and say their final goodbyes to the show. “You can take a man’s show, but you can’t take his voice,” Letterman told Colbert during their interview segment. “And that’s the good news indeed.”
Colbert’s fellow late night hosts have also stood in solidarity with him during the final weeks of his show. Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver all stopped by the Ed Sullivan Theater for a reunion of Strike Force Five, the podcast series which they started during the Writers Guild of America’s strike in 2023. Kimmel will also be airing a repeat episode on May 21 during Colbert’s final episode “out of deference to Colbert’s sendoff,” according to LateNighter.
Last July, Colbert announced that this 11th season of The Late Show would be his last. CBS stated that the choice to cancel the show was “purely a financial decision,” despite The Late Show being the No. 1 show on late night. The announcement coincided with CBS’ parent company, Paramount, trying to close a multibillion-dollar merger with David Ellison’s Skydance that required approval from the Trump administration.
“I knew that this show had to end at some time,” Colbert said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “I did not expect it to end this way.”
