Late-night hosts Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon will be going dark in solidarity with fellow late-night host Stephen Colbert on the last day before his show’s cancelation.
Colbert’s Late Show will be going off the air on CBS come May 21, and Jimmy Fallon will not be hosting, per Variety.
Instead of producing a new episode, NBC will air a rerun of “The Tonight Show” on May 21, which marks the final episode of Colber’s “Late Show” following its cancellation by CBS last year. Fallon joins Jimmy Kimmel in the show of late-night solidarity, as ABC confirmed on Monday that “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” would be bowing out to give “The Late Show” its largest possible audience on its last night.
Kimmel and Fallon, alongside “Late Night” host Seth Meyers and “Last Week Tonight” host John Oliver, appeared on “The Late Show” on Monday — a reunion of “Strike Force Five,” the podcast the five late-nighters hosted during the concurrent Writers Guild and SAG-AFTRA strikes in 2023. Proceeds from the podcast went toward supporting the crew members of all five late-night shows as they went without pay while production was paused.
“We consider Stephen Colbert irreplaceable and will retire ‘The Late Show’ franchise” in May of 2026,” executives said in a statement. “We are proud that Stephen called CBS home. He and the broadcast will be remembered in the pantheon of greats that graced late night television. This is purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night. It is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.”
The end came just days after Stephen Colbert denounced his parent company’s $16 million settlement with President Donald Trump, calling it a “big, fat bribe” for the Skydance merger. Critics of the cancelation claimed that it was a political retaliation; defenders of the cancelation argued that Colbert was costing the network $40 million a year in losses while employing a full crew of 200 people.