{"id":689087,"date":"2026-05-23T08:07:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T08:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/689087\/"},"modified":"2026-05-23T08:07:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T08:07:08","slug":"stephen-colbert-returns-to-only-in-monroe-after-late-show-finale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/689087\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Colbert Returns to Only in Monroe After Late Show Finale"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

First on LateNighter: Stephen Colbert<\/a> told viewers exactly where they\u2019d find him after The Late Show<\/a>. Turns out he wasn\u2019t kidding.<\/p>\n

At the top of his final CBS monologue Thursday night, Colbert paused to mark the occasion: \u201cTonight is our final broadcast from the Ed Sullivan Theater.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the audience booed, Colbert waved them off.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, no, we were lucky enough to be here for the last 11 years, all right? Can\u2019t take this for granted,\u201d he said. \u201cThough technically our first show in July of 2015 was from a public access station in Monroe, Michigan for an audience of 12 people. Show business being what it is these days, that\u2019s probably where you\u2019ll see me next.\u201d<\/p>\n

And that, apparently, was not just a punchline.<\/p>\n

Exactly 24 hours after Thursday night\u2019s Late Show, at 11:35pm Friday, Colbert popped back up on Only in Monroe, the Monroe, Michigan public-access show he famously commandeered in 2015<\/a> while preparing to launch The Late Show. The new appearance, like the first one, was unannounced\u2014a fittingly low-key encore for a host whose CBS run began with one of the strangest pre-debut stunts in late-night history.<\/p>\n

As he did in 2015, Colbert opened the show with some local flavor: a sit-down monologue chock full of locally flavored jokes , a theme he returned to in a later segment titled \u201cMonroe News,\u201d which focused on a rivalry between two local hot dog shops: \u201cMonroe\u2019s Original\u201d and \u201cVince\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n

Colbert\u2019s musical director for the night? None other than native Michigander Jack White<\/a>, who joined Colbert for a \u201cLady and the Tramp\u201d-style taste test of chilli dogs from the two shops<\/p>\n

He also welcomed back Michelle Baumann and Kaye Lani Rae Rafko Wilson, the regular hosts of Only in Monroe, with whom he drank shots of Cane & Grain, an 80 proof liquor from locally distillery River Raisin Distillery and discussed Baumann\u2019s thyroid cancer battle while taking turns inhaling helium. (She\u2019s in remission now.)<\/p>\n

He closed out his interview with the two women by offering them the opportunity to guest host Comics Unleashed, before FaceTiming the real Byron Allen<\/a>, who readily agreed.<\/p>\n

Steve Buscemi<\/a> dropped in with a commercial for a local pizza joint that he confessed he knows he knows nothing about, other than the fact that it shares his name.<\/p>\n

A different commercial break featured a government-mandated message: a lengthy (and apparently uninformed) description of the Monroe city flag for the visually impaired.<\/p>\n

Jeff Daniels<\/a>, resident of nearby Chelsea, Michigan (and Colbert\u2019s first-ever guest on a test episode of The Colbert Report<\/a>), later made his viral Colbert Questionert sandwich while answering the host\u2019s questions, and later helping him deliver a one last edition of \u201cCommunity Calendar.\u201d<\/p>\n

Concluding the episode, Daniels,White and Colbert destroyed the Only in Monroe set, complete with a cameo from Eminem.<\/p>\n

Watch the full episode above.<\/p>\n

Back in July 2015, Colbert was between jobs: finished with The Colbert Report, but still weeks away from inheriting David Letterman\u2019s desk. To relieve some of the pressure of launching his first network late-night show, Colbert and his team decided to make a \u201cfirst show\u201d somewhere else. That somewhere else turned out to be Monroe Public Access Cable Television, where viewers tuning in for Only in Monroe instead found Colbert watering a fern and filling in for regular hosts Michelle Baumann and Kaye Lani Rae Rafko Wilson.<\/p>\n

The 2015 episode went viral after Colbert interviewed Eminem as if he were merely \u201cMarshall Mathers, a local Michigander who is making a name for himself in the competitive world of music.\u201d It also gave Colbert one of his most charming recurring Late Show bits: Community Calendar, in which he and a guest would spotlight real events from the guest\u2019s hometown while seated on a recreation of the Only in Monroe set inside the Ed Sullivan Theater.<\/p>\n

So in hindsight, Colbert\u2019s finale-night nod to Monroe was doing a lot of work. It was a callback to the fake first show before his real first show. It was a joke about the shrinking economics of late night. And, as it turns out, it was also a breadcrumb.<\/p>\n

Get stories like this in your inbox:\u00a0Sign up for LateNighter\u2019s free daily newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"First on LateNighter: Stephen Colbert told viewers exactly where they\u2019d find him after The Late Show. Turns out…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":689088,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,14589,134,336426,3869,4626,427],"class_list":["post-689087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-breaking","tag-entertainment","tag-only-in-monroe","tag-stephen-colbert","tag-the-late-show-with-stephen-colbert","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=689087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689087\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/689088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=689087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=689087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=689087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}