There has been much ink spilled, in recent months, about the fate of late-night talk TV. The cancellation of Stephen Colbert has been the big marquee item, of course, with Paramount continuing to swear up and down that the axing was a strictly financial decision, rooted in how expensive these daily TV productions can be—and having nothing to do with Colbert’s political content, or his vocal criticisms of Paramount itself. But even outside that big-ass canary in the coal mine, there have been other birds dropping around the edges: The abandonment of Taylor Tomlinson’s After Midnight by CBS, and, even before that, the decision by NBC to cancel Lilly Singh’s A Little Late back in 2021, and drop the latest part of its late-night programming off the schedule.
Now, Canadian comedian Singh has opened up a bit about the cancellation, cheerfully agreeing that she was “set up to fail” by executives in a new interview with SiriusXM’s Julia Cunningham. “I don’t want to say you were set up to fail—” Cunningham begins, before Singh jumps in with a chipper “No, I was.” Singh points especially to the 1:30 a.m. show’s grueling schedule, which, due to budget restrictions, saw it record its whole 97-episode first season in bulk in the span of three months. (Among other things, meaning that Singh was releasing episodes with a live audience, and no mention of ongoing total societal disruption, during the first several months of the 2020 COVID-19 lockdowns.) “Then,” Singh adds, “The second season also released during the pandemic, so it was Zoom interviews. So, I had two pandemic seasons of a late-night show, half the writer’s room of everyone else, and half the budget.”
It’s worth noting that the late-late timeslot has always been built on some pretty harsh fiscal realities; the whole history of A Little Late’s predecessor in the slot, Last Call With Carson Daly, was basically a series of moves designed to produce talk show-esque content without having to shell out for a topical or regularly produced series. Still, it’s not hard to see how being expected to pump out timely, eye-catching content on that kind of schedule could be hugely dispiriting.
For what it’s worth, Singh sounds optimistic about the whole thing, noting that, “I’m so grateful because I feel like I can do any schedule and I learned so much”—including, she notes, what questions to ask about how much money she’ll have to make something, and what kind of schedule will be demanded of her. She’s certainly kept busy since A Little Late went off the air, starring in Muppets TV series The Muppets Mayhem; writing, executive producing, and starring in her own film, Doin’ It; and appearing in a voice role in The Bad Guys 2.
Lilly Singh makes the jump to Netflix as NBC ends A Little LateLilly Singh and Amber Ruffin gleefully squash the media’s made-up beef between them