Letterman Drops CBS F-Bomb in Wild Late Show Farewell

David Letterman came back to say goodbye — and he did not come quietly.

The original Late Show host joined Stephen Colbert on Thursday night for what he called his final appearance on the show he built, and together the two men did something Colbert had been explicitly forbidden from doing since the day he took over: they climbed to the top of the Ed Sullivan Theater and started throwing things off the roof.

First came the guest chairs — the ones that have seated presidents, pop stars, and everyone in between. Then Colbert’s own desk seat. Then watermelons, a callback to Letterman’s old NBC days when he famously launched them out of windows. Then a cake. All of it raining down onto the CBS eyemark logo on the street below.

“I thought maybe tonight’s occasion would be a little sad, being the end of your run here,” Letterman said from the roof, “but this brings true joy to my heart. We are up here for the wanton destruction of CBS property.”

Colbert had his own confession to make. “This is a true story. When I first got this gig, one of the first things they told me before we even moved into the offices is that I would not be allowed to throw anything off of the roof of the Ed Sullivan building, because evidently there was a problem with a previous tenant,” he said. “I never did it, but we’re at the end here, so all bets are off.”

The segment started downstairs, where Letterman admired the studio furniture with the energy of a man with absolutely nothing to lose. “This is nice,” he said. “It’d be a shame if something happened to this” — before a crew of people materialized to carry it all upstairs.

“Good Night and Good Luck, Motherf*cker”

But it was the end of the rooftop segment that nobody is going to forget. Letterman, standing above Broadway, signed off with a message directed not at the audience at home — but squarely at the network.

“I’d like to say to the audience before we go, well, not necessarily to the audience, but to the folks at CBS,” he said. “In the words of the great Ed Murrow: good night and good luck, motherfucker.”

The last word was bleeped. It did not need to be heard to be understood.

Earlier in the episode, Letterman joked that while he was backstage, he ran into someone from CBS — “and then he fired me.” He also got a little more serious about what the theater, and the show, actually represent. “I will say, and I have every right to be pissed off, so I’ll be pissed off here a little bit, because this theater — you folks wouldn’t be in this theater if it weren’t for me, and Stephen wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for me, and we rebuilt this theater, and then Stephen came in and look at this, it’s like the Bellagio,” he said. “As we all understand, you can take a man’s show, you can’t take a man’s voice. So that’s the good news in this.”

Letterman hosted The Late Show from 1993 to 2015, when Colbert stepped in as his successor. Now that chapter is closing entirely — CBS announced it’s not just ending Colbert’s run but canceling the Late Show franchise altogether, with the final episode set for May 21.

“They’re Lying Weasels”

Letterman has been vocal about what he thinks is really going on. CBS has maintained the cancellation was “purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night” and had nothing to do with the show’s content or performance. Letterman doesn’t buy it.

“They’re lying,” he told the New York Times last week. “They’re lying weasels.” He went further, describing how Colbert got pushed out in the shuffle of the network’s sale to David Ellison’s Skydance: “He was dumped because the people selling the network to Skydance said, ‘Oh no, there’s not going to be any trouble with that guy. We’re going to take care of the show. We’re just going to throw that into the deal. When will the ink on the check dry.’”

Many of Colbert’s fans share the skepticism, given how relentlessly critical the host has been of President Trump throughout his tenure. Colbert himself has not backed down from his public dispute with CBS leadership in the weeks since the cancellation was announced.

A Week of Goodbyes

Thursday’s rooftop chaos came in the middle of an extraordinary final week for the show. On Monday, the entire Strike Force Five assembled — Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, John Oliver, and Seth Meyers all appeared together to send Colbert off, prompting him to quip: “Late night is in a bit of a weird spot right now — spoiler alert. The five of us being here right now, obviously, it’s dangerous because we represent so much of late night. Jon Stewart is the designated survivor. Someone has to survive for the president to be mad at.”

Wednesday brought two more heavy hitters. Former President Barack Obama stopped by for “The Colbert Questionert,” revealing that his favorite sandwich is a cheeseburger, his scariest animal is the mosquito, and that when asked what happens when we die, he offered something genuinely moving — that if you’ve lived a good life, you live on in the memories of the people who loved you. Tom Hanks also appeared Wednesday, presenting Colbert with birthday gifts including a typewriter, dot matrix paper, and a bag of Hanks Coffee (which the Oscar winner is selling to benefit veterans), while promoting his new History Channel documentary.

CBS has not yet announced the full guest lineup for Colbert’s final episodes leading up to May 21. But after Thursday night, it’s hard to imagine anything topping a former late-night legend hurling furniture off a Manhattan rooftop and dropping a bleeped Murrow reference on the network that built him.

“You can take a man’s show,” Letterman said. “You can’t take a man’s voice.”