{"id":512813,"date":"2026-03-09T10:41:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-09T10:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/512813\/"},"modified":"2026-03-09T10:41:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-09T10:41:08","slug":"stephen-colbert-rejects-blacklisted-writer-comparison-praises-staff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/512813\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Colbert Rejects Blacklisted Writer Comparison, Praises Staff"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tStephen Colbert<\/a> was honored at the 2026 Writers Guild Awards <\/a>with the Walter Bernstein Award, given to someone who has used creativity, grace and bravery to confront social injustice in the face of adversity.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut the Late Show host, known for his sharp criticism of the Trump administration, whose show is coming to an end in a little over two months for what network CBS called a \u201cpurely financial decision\u201d amid a challenging linear TV environment,<\/a> rejected comparisons between himself and Bernstein.<\/p>\n

\n\tTalking about researching Bernstein ahead of receiving the award, Colbert said he wasn\u2019t sure why he didn\u2019t realize that the Hollywood \u201cblacklist was not a government policy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe continued, \u201cThe blacklist wasn\u2019t a law or a regulation or an executive order. 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 for 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis is not the 1950s,\u201d he said. \u201cThis 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTo laughs, Colbert joked, poking fun at reports about The Late Show\u2018s financial losses, \u201cEvidently, the revolution was losing, like, $40 million a year \u2014 it had to go. I guess the revolution is thinking about starting a Substack.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBeyond those initial quips, though, Colbert didn\u2019t speak about political forces that some have suggested may have contributed to the end of his show, but he did look back on his time working with Robert Smigel<\/a>, who presented him with the honor and whom Colbert worked alongside on the short-lived Dana Carvey Show, and he used the time onstage to praise his 20 writers, who were not nominated for the Writers Guild<\/a> Awards<\/a> this year, naming and listing fun facts about each one and sharing jokes they\u2019d written that didn\u2019t make it to air.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe jokes including barbs about the Supreme Court\u2019s decision overturning Roe v. Wade (\u201cno aborts, good luck\u201d), Donald Trump saying that if Ivanka Trump wasn\u2019t his daughter he might \u201cbe dating her\u201d and claims that Louis C.K., during the #MeToo era reports of sexual misconduct by the comedian, took off all of his clothes to masturbate: \u201cOh my God, he masturbates like a toddler poops.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe also shared a cut joke about OpenAI allowing users to create adult content, with one analyst arguing that the move could \u201cboost\u201d OpenAI as it was urging people to sign up for paid subscriptions.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cUgh, that is so desperate,\u201d Colbert said, reading the joke. \u201cIt\u2019s like when McDonald\u2019s changed their slogan to \u2018we suck dick now.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe line was cut several times by Colbert, who noted ad sales didn\u2019t object to the joke, but wouldn\u2019t die among his staff and even made it onto a Christmas gift sweatshirt boasting the McDonald\u2019s logo and the caption, \u201cWe suck dick now.\u201d Pulling out the garment, Colbert put it on for the rest of his speech.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tStephen Colbert, sporting his staff joke sweatshirt, and Robert Smigel at the 2026 Writers Guild Awards.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCindy Ord\/Getty Images for Writers Guild of America East<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIf you liked any of these ideas, please employ these lovely folks,\u201d Colbert said of his staff, which like the host will be out of work after the last Late Show airs on May 21<\/a>. \u201cThey are the best writing staff I have ever known at any show, and I have loved our time together, which wasn\u2019t as much time as I would like,\u201d he said. \u201cI started in late night as one of them. Thanks to Robert, 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\u2019t be in the writers\u2019 room as much as you used to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAnd to some, hosting may seem like a hard job, and sometimes it is, but what\u2019s also hard is hearing the laughter from the room down the hall and not be able to go in,\u201d he added. \u201cIf you\u2019ve 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 \u2014 whatever it is \u2014 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tDespite CBS\u2019 claim that the decision to end The Late Show was merely \u201cfinancial,\u201d there\u2019s been widespread speculation about possible other reasons for the cancellation, as Colbert has been a prominent critic of President Donald Trump and, just days before news broke of the Late Show\u2018s end, Colbert criticized CBS parent ocmpany Paramount\u2019s controversial $16 million settlement<\/a> of a lawsuit filed by Trump over a 60 Minutes interview with his 2024 election opponent, former Vice President Kamala Harris. When announcing The Late Show\u2018s end, Paramount insisted the move was \u201cnot related in any way to the show\u2019s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSome observers remained unconvinced, including the Writers Guild<\/a>, which a day after the cancellation was announced, asked New York state Attorney General Letitia James to open an inquiry into \u201cpotential wrongdoing\u201d at Paramount Global, expressing concerns that getting rid of the Late Show was a form of bribery.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cCancellations are part of the business, but a corporation terminating a show in bad faith due to explicit or implicit political pressure is dangerous and unacceptable in a democratic society,\u201d the union stated. \u201cParamount\u2019s decision comes against a backdrop of relentless attacks on a free press by President Trump, through lawsuits against CBS and ABC, threatened litigation of media organizations with critical coverage and the unconscionable defunding of PBS and NPR.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTrump celebrated the news of the Late Show cancellation on his Truth Social platform.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI absolutely love that Colbert got fired,\u201d the president wrote<\/a> the day after the cancellation was announced. \u201cHis talent was even less than his ratings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLess than two months after Colbert announced the Late Show was being canceled, the series won the best talk show Emmy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn that speech, Colbert said that while he had initially set out to make a late night show about love, he later realized \u201cwe were doing a late night comedy show about loss. That\u2019s related to love, because sometimes you only truly know how much you love something when you get a sense you might be losing it. Ten years later, in September 2025, my friends, I have never loved my country more desperately. God bless America. Stay strong, be brave, and if the elevator tries to bring you down, go crazy and punch a higher floor.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile Colbert has not yet announced his next move (he insisted at the Emmys that he was focused on wrapping up the show as \u201cbeautifully\u201d as he could), he told fellow late night host Seth Meyers in January<\/a> that the end \u201cfeels real now\u201d and he\u2019s \u201cnot thrilled with it.\u201d Colbert added that while he\u2019ll miss the people he works with, some of whom he\u2019s collaborated with for decades, he vowed that he and his longtime collaborators would \u201cdo something else together.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stephen Colbert was honored at the 2026 Writers Guild Awards with the Walter Bernstein Award, given to someone…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":512814,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[10546,236,88,232465,10674,205370,232335,51296,39847],"class_list":["post-512813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-awards","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-robert-smigel","tag-stephen-colbert","tag-wga-awards","tag-wga-awards-2026","tag-writers-guild","tag-writers-guild-of-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=512813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/512814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=512813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=512813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=512813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}