Stephen Colbert was honored at the 2026 Writers Guild Awards with the Walter Bernstein Award last night and used the opportunity to criticize his parent network Paramount.

The award is given to someone who has “demonstrated with creativity, grace and bravery a willingness to confront social injustice in the face of adversity.” It is named for Walter Bernstein, an American screenwriter who was blacklisted during Hollywood’s Red Scare in the 1950s, and has only been given twice before.

During his speech Colbert noted that he hadn’t previously realized that “the blacklist was not a government policy.”

“The blacklist wasn’t a law or a regulation or an executive order,” he said. “It was a voluntary industry-wide agreement to deny work to left-leaning artists out of fear that certain members of the government might publicly attack the parent corporation of these artists or the union that they belong to. It was that threat, only the threat, of trouble that ended so many careers. And now while to be associated with Mr. Bernstein in any way is a great honor, I want to be clear that I do not deserve the implied parallel here.”

He continued, “This is not the 1950s. This is not the Red Scare. And, as far as I can tell, no one in late night is fomenting a revolution. As we know, the revolution will not be televised. It was going to be televised, but then Paramount bought it. Evidently, the revolution was losing, like, $40 million a year — it had to go. I hear the revolution is thinking about starting a Substack.”

Colbert didn’t reference Donald Trump in his speech, despite the Trump administration reportedly putting pressure on Paramount to kill The Late Show. The popular late-night show will come to an end on May 21 after a decade of Colbert as its host. Colbert did read out several jokes that have been cut during his time on the show, crediting his writing staff for their quips.

“The actual ‘Go’ message from President Trump to launch last week’s Iran attack was ‘Operation Epic Fury is approved. No aborts, good luck,’” Colbert said. “Coincidentally, ‘No aborts, good luck’ was also the majority opinion in the Dobbs Decision.”

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He added, “At the height of #MeToo, when it was reported that Louis CK took off all his clothes to masturbate in front of two women, one of my female writers offered me this joke: ‘Oh my God, he masturbates like a toddler poops.’”

Colbert concluded his speech by celebrating his time as a late-night host and recounting how much he has missed spending time in the writers’ room.

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“If you liked any of these ideas, please employ these lovely folks after May 21, Colbert said. “They have so much to offer… They are the best writing staff I have ever known at any show, and I have loved our time together, which wasn’t as much time as I would like. I started in late-night as one of them. Thanks to Robert [Smigel], Dana Carvey, and Jon Stewart, and many other people, I ended up in front of the camera every night, which is a very good job with its own responsibilities, meaning you can’t be in the writers room as much as you used to be.”

He added, “And to some, hosting may seem like a hard job, and sometimes it is, but what’s also hard is hearing the laughter from the room down the hall and not being able to go in. If you’ve ever been lucky enough to be in that room, you will always want to be in that sound. And what is really gonna be hard is missing these people, who despite the fresh hell — whatever it is — that the news washes in, make that beautiful sound happen every day. So to them, and all of you, and Walter Bernstein, and to our guild, thank you so much.”