Photos: CBS, NBC
Stephen Colbert is set to make a rare appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers next Tuesday, January 27—marking his first visit to Meyers’ show in more than a decade.
Colbert last guested on Late Night on September 2, 2014, when he was stil hosting The Colbert Report and Meyers was just six months into his tenure as host. Since then, the two have gone from friendly peers to collaborators, most notably as members of Strike Force Five, the late-night podcast launched during the 2023 writers’ strike alongside Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, and John Oliver.
Logistically, the upcoming appearance will require a bit of careful choreography. Colbert will make the five-block trek from his offices at the Ed Sullivan Theater to 30 Rock on Monday, pre-taping his Late Night appearance before returning to record his own show. (Meyers tapes two episodes most Mondays, covering both Monday and Tuesday night broadcasts.)
While Colbert’s visits to Late Night have been scarce, Meyers has become a familiar face on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert recently, appearing three times in the past eighteen months. That run began with a June 2024 visit, followed a few months later by a taped installment of the “Colbert Questionert” that was recorded during that same appearance.
Perhaps most memorably, Meyers returned last July for Colbert’s first episode after CBS announced it would be cancelling The Late Show at the end of the current season. That episode featured a high-profile group bit that included Fallon, Oliver, Jon Stewart, and Andy Cohen—an unmistakable show of solidarity and defiance from across the late-night landscape.
Colbert’s upcoming appearance on Late Night is just the latest example of late-night hosts crossing network lines, a dynamic that has become increasingly common in recent years. It also serves as another reminder that the so-called “Late Night Wars”—which defined earlier eras of the format, from David Letterman vs. Jay Leno in the early 1990s to Leno’s later showdown with Conan O’Brien—are firmly in the past.
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