Jay Leno is critiquing the current state of late-night comedy shows, suggesting that the hosts are alienating half of their audience, in an interview that surfaced just days after Stephen Colbert’s dismissal from CBS. 

The 75-year-old former host of The Tonight Show discussed changes in late-night culture during a conversation with David Trulio, president of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation.

The candid conversation was taped two weeks ago but was recently shared and quickly circulated online.

They spoke openly about comedy, politics and what’s changed in the late-night world. 

Trulio began by mentioning to Leno that his jokes had a reputation of being equally balanced in his time on air. 

“I read there was an assessment of your work on ‘The Tonight Show’ over 22 years showing your jokes were fairly evenly split between targeting Republicans and Democrats. Did you have a specific approach?” Trulio inquired.

‘I got hate letters saying, ‘You and your Republican friends,’ and another saying, ‘I hope you and your Democratic buddies are happy’ – over the same joke,’ Leno said.

‘That’s how you get a whole audience. Now you have to be content with half the audience, because you have to give your opinion.’ 

‘Rodney Dangerfield and I were friends,’ Continued Leno. ‘I knew Rodney 40 years and I have no idea if he was a Democrat or Republican. We never discussed politics, we just discussed jokes.’

‘I like to think that people come to a comedy show to get away from the pressures of life. I love political humor – don’t get me wrong. But people wind up cozying too much to one side or the other.’

‘Funny is funny,’ Leno said. ‘It’s funny when someone who’s not….when you make fun of their side and they laugh at it, you know, that’s kind of what I do.’

‘I just find getting out – I don’t think anybody wants to hear a lecture,’ he continued. ‘When I was with Rodney, it was always in the economy of words – get to the joke as quickly as possible.’

He criticized comedians who inject their political opinions into every monologue and said he preferred making the whole audience laugh rather than pushing an agenda. 

‘I don’t think anybody wants to hear a lecture … Why shoot for just half an audience? Why not try to get the whole? I like to bring people into the big picture,’ he said. 

‘I don’t understand why you would alienate one particular group, you know, or just don’t do it at all. I’m not saying you have to throw your support or whatever, but just do what’s funny.’ 

His comments come in the wake of Colbert’s dramatic departure from The Late Show.  

A media frenzy engulfed The Late Show after Colbert publicly slammed the CBS show’s parent corporation, Paramount Global, for settling a defamation lawsuit with Trump for $16 million, calling it a ‘big, fat, bribe,’ in his opening monologue.

Just days after the searing call-out, Colbert told his studio audience that the network was ending The Late Show in May 2026.

Speculation has loomed over why the show was canceled, with A-listers and fellow talk-show hosts coming to the comedian’s defense.

Colbert won an Emmy for his work on The Colbert Report, a satirical show that ran on Comedy Central from 2005 to 2014.

After he replaced David Letterman on The Late Show, the program was nominated for the most Outstanding Talk Series at the Emmys from 2017 to 2022.

Meanwhile, other late-night legends have rallied behind Colbert in the wake of his show’s cancellation. 

Jimmy Fallon said: ‘I don’t like it. I don’t like what’s going on one bit. These are crazy times,’ Fallon said, referencing how ‘everybody [was] talking about’ the decision.

‘And many people are now threatening to boycott the network’, he said, setting up another punchline.

‘Yeah – CBS could lose millions of viewers, plus tens of hundreds watching on Paramount+.’

David Letterman also backed his successor and suggested CBS canceled The Late Show because he was ‘always shooting his mouth off’ about Donald Trump.

The 78-year-old late-night legend created The Late Show in 1993 after NBC denied him the chance to succeed Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show.

In his first comment on the show’s cancellation, Letterman noted that his show was more about political satire than his version of The Late Show but was still complimentary, calling the decision by CBS ‘pure cowardice.’

‘I think one day, if not today, the people at CBS who have manipulated and handled this, they’re going to be embarrassed, because this is gutless,’ he told former Late Show producers Barbara Gaines and Mary Barclay.