It’s been more than a decade since Craig Ferguson left his perch as host of CBS’ “The Late Late Show,” and he honestly doesn’t give the late night world much thought these days. That’s especially true when asked about his former employer’s decision to cancel “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” and get out of the talk game all together.
“This is the truth of me in late night television,” Ferguson recently told Variety. “I didn’t really watch late night television before I did it, and then I certainly didn’t watch it while I was doing it, and then afterwards, I don’t really watch it. So, it’s not something I feel qualified to really either predict or comment on, to be honest. I mean, I did my thing, but I don’t know that my thing was ever really part of that thing. Do you know what I mean?”
Of course, Ferguson is being a little cheeky: He has thoughts. Ferguson spent ten seasons as host of “The Late Late Show,” taking over for Craig Kilborn in 2005 and exiting at the end of 2014. James Corden took over after that, but upon Corden’s departure in 2023, “The Late Late Show” was retired. Now, with CBS ending Colbert’s show in May, that franchise (which launched with David Letterman in 1993) will soon be gone as well. A few diehard Ferguson fans last year tried to float the comedian’s name as perhaps a way for CBS to stay in the talk game — but Ferguson isn’t interested.
“That’s not something that I’m into,” he said. “You only do it two days in Shawshank, right? First day and last day. I’m very proud of that talk show I did. I’m really glad I did it. I think we hit the ball more often than we missed. But I don’t feel I need to do it again. It would almost make it not as valuable as it is to me, if I started doing it again.”
Ferguson’s time on “Late Late Show” lives on via bootleg clips on YouTube. A fan account, “Late Late Show w/ Craig Ferguson Archive,” has received as many as a million views — not bad for a feed that Ferguson, producer Worldwide Pants or CBS have no control over.
“It’s weird, because I think I’m probably less connected to that old show than people who watched it a lot,” Ferguson said. “That was then and now is now. I’m glad I did it, I’m very proud of it. But I haven’t lived with it on a day-to-day basis for a long time.”
Instead, Ferguson has wound up on a bit of a different TV track over the past decade: Game show and panel show host. In recent years he hosted the syndicated “Celebrity Name Game,” History’s “Join or Die With Craig Ferguson” and ABC’s “The Hustler.” Now, he has joined The CW’s primetime gamer “Scrabble” for its Season 2 (replacing Raven-Symoné), which premieres Thursday night.
“I’ve been playing Scrabble since I was a kid,” he said. “I suspect it’s the reason why I can actually read given the given the way that my education went. So I was very keen that we got a TV version of Scrabble that I thought did justice to the game. What I did notice is how competitive Scrabble players are. I used to think I was good at Scrabble, but these people are great at Scrabble.”
Ferguson said he is drawn to the improv, freestyle nature of hosting a game show like “Scrabble.” “It’s about the fact that there’s really no prep,” he said. “I go and I play the game with the contestants, and the only information I have is the contestants’ names and how to pronounce them correctly.”
Of course, Ferguson admits that he enjoys interacting so much with the contestants that tapings run long and most of that banter has to end up on the cutting room floor.
“A TV hour is around 44 minutes [before commercials] and it takes us, easily, double that, with me talking smack and BS about this, that and the next thing,” he said. “I just play, and then whatever has to be taken out in order to the game, it’s ordered. I suspect there will be a lot of B-roll and outtakes that will become available pretty soon, once the show starts airing.”
Fans of Ferguson’s offbeat humor — on “The Late Late Show” he had a robot sidekick, pantomime horse and puppets, after all — will be pleased to see the comedian open each episode of “Scrabble” dancing to the show’s theme song. “There has to be more dancing,” he said. “However, I will say this, people who like Scrabble seem to be unconcerned about how much dancing I do in the ‘Scrabble’ game show.”
Meanwhile, even though he’s not looking to go back to talk TV, Ferguson did launch his podcast, “Joy, a Podcast, Hosted by Craig Ferguson,” in 2023. The show started with regular guests, and he’s still doing interviews — but only if they’re in person. “I think I’m probably as good as anyone who does Zoom call interviews, but in person, I think maybe I’m a little better than most people who do it,” he said. “So I kind of feel like, play to your strength. I enjoy it much more when you’re in a room talking with someone. So what I do now with a podcast is, if I’m away on work, I’ll just record a half hour of me answering questions from people who watch the podcast, and then that’s the podcast. If I can’t have a guest in the studio, then I’ll just talk directly to the people who watch it.”
Next month, Ferguson hits the road for the next leg of his current standup tour, “Pants on Fire,” which kicks off Feb. 5 in Charlotte, N.C. But he’s still not sure if he’ll turn it into a TV special.
“I don’t know if I want to make any more stand up specials,” he said. “I made one a couple of years ago, and it turned out OK, and I was happy with it. But the thing is about making a special, I always think that you do it, and then if you ever look at it later, you go, ‘Ah, fuck, I could have made that better by doing that.’ Jay Leno has never made a stand up special in 50 years, and I don’t think he ever will. I kind of get it. I like the doing of standup, I don’t know that I need to film it. Maybe I will. I don’t know.”
“Scrabble,” produced by Hasbro Entertainment, The CW, Mattel Television Studios and Lionsgate Alternative Television, premieres Thursday at 8 p.m. ET on The CW. David Hurwitz is showrunner and executive producer, while Raven-Symoné is EP, along with Gabriel Marano, David Garfinkle and Chynna Weiss.