Stephen Colbert’s Latest Episode Leaves Viewers Disengaged

The latest installment of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” offered viewers a delightful treat with a special appearance from Oprah Winfrey, whose warm demeanor was on full display.

The Tuesday interview saw the two temporarily swap seats and roles, causing it to devolve into a de facto tribute. Colbert’s show goes off the air in May.

Before diving into the main conversation, Winfrey kicked things off with a thought-provoking question directed at Colbert, which instantly captured his attention.

“How are you feeling about the whole thing, though? How are you feeling?” Winfrey inquired, setting the stage for a candid exchange.

Colbert, ever the entertainer at 61, responded with a playful caution, “Don’t go Oprah on me now…” He then humorously suggested they swap seats, inviting Winfrey to take the host’s chair.

Winfrey, at 72, embraced the lighthearted moment with enthusiasm, exclaiming, “This is so exciting,” as she settled into her temporary role.

She went on to ask: ‘So I am wondering, as you stand here at the threshold of what’s about to be done and what you’re stepping into, what do you feel like, in this moment?[What do] you most want to release?’

Colbert – rather than take another shot at the administration – joked that he did not want to ‘release anything just yet,’ purposely looking at the question more literally.

Stephen Colbert and Oprah Winfrey swapped roles on Tuesday’s installment of ‘The Late Show’, leading a previously conventional interview to turn into a plug for the host’s career

Colbert received praise from not only Winfrey during the noticeably friendly spot, but his house band as well

‘I still have a white-knuckle grip on all these people who I love, who I’ve worked with all these years, including those people over there,’ Colbert said, pointing to his crew and his band. 

‘And the audience, obviously,’ he added, to raucous applause.

Winfrey and Colbert held hands for much of the conversation.

Earlier on, Winfrey told the host she was there to bid a ‘bittersweet’ farewell.

‘We’re still having a really good time doing it,’ Colbert quipped. An op-ed from Variety recently cast Colbert’s recent catalogue of interviews as ‘an ego trip’ rather than a tasteful farewell.

Colbert has hosted “The Late Show” since 2015. He succeeded late night legend David Letterman.  

CBS said over the summer that the show would be cancelled this spring due to a ‘challenging backdrop in late night.’ A subsequent report from Puck suggested the show was losing money. Sources said it was shedding $40million-a-year. 

Colbert openly criticized Paramount – CBS’s parent company – days before the announcement.

Winfrey and Colbert held hands for much of the ‘interview’

The audience offered the host a standing ovation amid the steady stream of compliments

He took issue with the company reaching a $16million settlement with Donald Trump surrounding an October 2024 60 Minutes interview with then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris that the lawsuit claimed was ‘deceptively edited’.

Colbert called the move ‘a big fat bribe’.

A long-in-limbo merger between Paramount and Skydance was approved by the FCC just days later, fueling Colbert’s recent attacks on both Trump and CBS’s C-suite.

Last month, he took a shot at Paramount over purported censorship, while being honored with an award named for a Hollywood producer famed for pushing back on censorship during clampdowns in the McCarthy Era. 

‘As we know, the revolution will not be televised. It was going to be televised, but then Paramount bought it,’ he said while accepting the Walter Bernstein award, quoting a famed 1970 poem that warned against the effects of propaganda. 

‘Evidently, the revolution was losing, like, $40 million a year – it had to go,’ he said, using sarcasm to cast doubt on a figure used in the Puck piece.

The last episode of The Late Show airs on May 22. CBS said this week that it will be replaced by Comics Unleashed, a long-syndicated comedy panel show.