• David Letterman made his final Late Show appearance Thursday, one week before Colbert’s May 21 sign-off
• The two hosts threw guest chairs, Colbert’s desk seat, watermelons, and a cake off the Ed Sullivan Theater roof onto the CBS logo below
• Letterman closed the segment by paraphrasing Ed Murrow with a bleeped — but very obvious — farewell to CBS executives
• Letterman previously called CBS brass “lying weasels” for claiming the cancellation was purely financial
• The final week has also featured Barack Obama, Tom Hanks, and the entire Strike Force Five late-night crew

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.”

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• David Letterman appeared on The Late Show Thursday — likely his final appearance on the show he originally hosted from 1993 to 2015
• The two threw guest chairs, Colbert’s desk chair, watermelons, and a wedding cake off the Ed Sullivan Theater roof onto a CBS logo
• Letterman signed off with a blistering Ed Murrow parody: “Good night and good luck, motherf*cker”
• Colbert’s final episode airs May 21 — the show’s cancellation has been widely linked to the Trump-aligned Skydance takeover of CBS
• Letterman previously called CBS executives “lying weasels” for claiming the cancellation was purely financial

David Letterman came back to The Late Show on Thursday night — and he did not come quietly. One week before Stephen Colbert’s final episode, the man who built the show and the theater that houses it returned to help his successor go out with maximum chaos, maximum heart, and a farewell to CBS that will be quoted for a very long time.

The night ended on the roof of the Ed Sullivan Theater, where Letterman and Colbert launched guest chairs, Colbert’s own desk chair, watermelons, and a wedding cake off the building and onto a giant CBS eyemark logo painted below. “I thought maybe tonight’s occasion would be a little sad, being the end of your run here,” Letterman said as they surveyed the scene. “But this brings true joy to my heart. We are up here for the wanton destruction of CBS property.”

And then, invoking the legendary broadcast journalist Ed Murrow, Letterman delivered his parting shot to the network: “Good night and good luck, motherf*cker.” The last word was bleeped, but nobody in the Ed Sullivan Theater — or watching at home — had any trouble filling it in.

“You Can Take a Man’s Show, You Can’t Take a Man’s Voice”

Before the rooftop destruction, Letterman walked out to a lengthy standing ovation — the band kicking things off with a thundering “Seven Nation Army” — and wasted no time making clear exactly how he feels about all of this.

“I have every right to be pissed off, so I’ll be pissed off here a little bit,” he told Colbert. “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. We rebuilt this theater, and then Stephen came in, and look at this? It’s like the Bellagio.” He paused. “But, listen — as we all understand, you can take a man’s show, you can’t take a man’s voice.”

He also got off one of the night’s best jokes early: “Well, you know what happened backstage? I’m standing backstage, a guy comes over, he says he’s from CBS — and he fires me. What is going on over there?!”

Letterman then turned his concern, with perfect comic timing, to the late-night ecosystem at large. “What I’m really worried about is: What will become of the Jimmys? Are they going to be all right?” — a nod to Colbert’s fellow hosts Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon. Colbert’s response: “We’ve got a plan to put them in a captive breeding program.”

How the Furniture Ended Up on the Roof

The bit started simply enough. Letterman admired the set — the plush guest chairs, the desk, the whole polished Late Show setup — and asked Colbert point-blank: does CBS own this furniture? When Colbert confirmed it, Letterman’s eyes lit up. “This is nice. Would be a shame if something happened to it.”

Within moments, stagehands were stripping the stage bare. With nowhere left to sit, Letterman and Colbert wandered into the audience, sat with fans, and reminisced about their shared history in the theater before heading upstairs. Colbert noted that when he first got the gig, one of the very first things he was told was that he would not be allowed to throw anything off the roof — “because evidently there was a problem with a previous tenant.” He never did it. Until Thursday.

Letterman, of course, was famous during his NBC years for hurling watermelons out of windows. Doing it again, from the roof of the building he helped restore, onto the logo of the network that just canceled his successor — it landed as both callback and catharsis.

What’s Really Behind the Cancellation

CBS has maintained that ending The Late Show was “purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night,” unrelated to the show’s content. Letterman doesn’t buy a word of it — and he’s said so publicly.

In a recent interview with The New York Times, he called CBS executives “lying weasels” and laid out his theory plainly: “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?'”

The timing has fueled enormous suspicion. The cancellation was announced shortly after Colbert mocked Paramount’s $16 million settlement with President Donald Trump, calling it a “big fat bribe.” Trump himself celebrated openly on Truth Social, posting: “I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings.” That the announcement came just weeks before David Ellison’s Skydance finalized its CBS-Paramount takeover made the optics nearly impossible to spin. Even Jimmy Kimmel weighed in on the network’s claimed $40 million annual loss figure, saying there was “not a snowball’s chance in hell that’s accurate.”

Colbert, for his part, told The Hollywood Reporter that he “did not expect it to end this way.”

One Week Left

Thursday’s appearance made Letterman’s return feel like a proper passing of the torch — or more accurately, a passing of the watermelon. He hosted The Late Show from 1993 to 2015, handed it to Colbert, and now watched it end under circumstances neither of them chose.

The final week has been a parade of people who love Colbert and wanted to show up for him. Earlier this week, the entire Strike Force Five — Kimmel, Fallon, John Oliver, and Seth Meyers — appeared together on the show. Tom Hanks, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Barack Obama have all stopped by in recent weeks.

Colbert’s last episode airs May 21. And somewhere in the rubble of CBS furniture on the sidewalk outside the Ed Sullivan Theater, Letterman’s message to the network is still echoing: good night, and good luck.

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• Stephen Colbert admitted Michelle Williams left him so flustered he “didn’t know what to do with his eyeballs” during her 2016 Late Show appearance
• Colbert made the confession on a special Strike Force Five reunion podcast with Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver
• David Letterman — who handed the Late Show desk to Colbert in 2015 — returns tonight, May 14, with The Strokes performing
• The Late Show with Stephen Colbert airs its final episode on May 21, ending a 33-year run of the franchise on CBS

Stephen Colbert is spending his final weeks on the Late Show the way he’s spent the last 11 years — being disarmingly honest, surprisingly funny, and occasionally a little unhinged in the best possible way. And this week, that combination produced one of the most genuinely charming confessions of his entire run.

During a special reunion episode of the Strike Force Five podcast — the group he formed with Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver — Colbert was asked if he’d ever interviewed a guest so attractive it became genuinely distracting. He didn’t hesitate.

“I’ll tell you who I did not expect to be wildly attracted to,” he told his fellow hosts. “I didn’t know what to do with myself. I like this person’s work, but I never thought of them as like a bombshell. I did not know what to do with my eyeballs when Michelle Williams was on for the first time.”

Williams first appeared on the Late Show in 2016, promoting the Broadway show Blackbird. And apparently, from the moment she sat down across from him, Colbert was a mess.

“She sat down across from me and I went, ‘F**k, what is wrong with my head? I’d better not look directly at her for this entire interview,'” he recalled. “There was something about her vibe, her face, everything. She’s so beautiful.”

Williams has returned to the Late Show several times since — most recently in April 2025 to promote Dying for Sex, the Hulu limited series for which she won a Golden Globe. She also appeared in 2019 for Fosse/Verdon. Colbert, for his part, reportedly recited poetry in her honor during that last visit, which tracks perfectly for a man who was apparently barely keeping it together in her presence from the start.

He’s Had Other ‘Problems’ Too

Williams wasn’t the only one to leave Colbert tongue-tied. He confessed to a full-blown “Rachel Weisz problem” — one that predates the Late Show entirely.

“When Rachel Weisz would be on The Daily Show, I would leave the building for fear that I would say something stupid,” he said. “I was afraid I would go” — switching to a comically high-pitched voice — “‘Hi! You were great in The Constant Gardener.'”

He also named Rebecca Ferguson and Andrew Garfield as guests who left him awestruck. The Garfield mention prompted Kimmel to remind him, on air, that he’d actually kissed the Spider-Man star during a January 2017 episode of the Late Show.

“Or he kissed me,” Colbert clarified, with zero regret. “We did get our hands tangled in each other’s hair. It was really nice.”

For the record, Colbert — who married his wife Evelyn in 1993 after meeting her in a cinema line in 1990 — has always been clear about where his heart sits. “There is absolutely, bar none, no one who comes close” to Evelyn, he said back in 2019. “The most harrowing idea would be that I would spend any part of my life without her because that would be a level of loneliness and irreplaceable, irredeemable emotional desolation that I could not possibly contemplate.” The man contains multitudes, and apparently also a functional sense of humor about all of them.

Tonight: Letterman Comes Home

While Colbert is busy making confessions, there’s also a big booking to catch tonight. David Letterman — the man who held the Late Show desk for over two decades before passing it to Colbert in 2015 — returns to the show tonight, Wednesday, May 14, at 11:35 p.m. ET on CBS. The Strokes are performing.

It’s a full-circle moment in a week already stacked with them. Barack Obama appeared on Wednesday for his second Late Show visit this month alone, and CBS has confirmed the guest lineup for the final week — which includes Tom Hanks and Hamilton star Christopher Jackson — is still being rolled out ahead of the May 21 finale.

Tonight’s episode will stream on Paramount+ after it airs, and clips are expected online shortly after broadcast.

What Colbert Says He’ll Miss Most

The Strike Force Five reunion wasn’t just laughs and celebrity crushes. Colbert got genuinely reflective about what the end of the show means to him — and his answer was quieter than you might expect.

“I think one of the things I’m going to miss most is young people who are good at their jobs,” he said. “And who you met, and they were first out of college or something like that. Like, I was talking to one of my producers the other day. He’s worked for me for 21 years, and he started working for me when he was 21.”

CBS canceled the Late Show last year, citing low ratings after 11 seasons with Colbert. The network has since announced that Comics Unleashed with Byron Allen will fill the 11:35 p.m. slot after the finale. Many observers pointed to the political climate around CBS parent company Paramount Global — now under the ownership of David Ellison, a close ally of President Donald Trump — as a contributing factor, though CBS has not confirmed that framing.

Colbert himself addressed the abruptness of it all when the cancellation was announced: “I have had a great relationship with CBS. It’s one of the reasons why this was so surprising and so shocking that there was no preamble to this.”

The full Strike Force Five conversation is streaming on YouTube now, and it’s exactly the kind of warm, messy, honest sendoff Colbert deserves.

One week left. Letterman tonight. And somewhere out there, Michelle Williams probably has a very good story to tell about a host who was conspicuously avoiding eye contact.

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• David Letterman called CBS executives “lying weasels” in a new New York Times interview, rejecting the network’s claim that The Late Show cancellation was purely financial.
• Letterman alleged the show was axed to smooth over the $8 billion Skydance-Paramount merger and avoid friction with the Trump administration.
• CBS, when contacted by the Times after Letterman’s comments, stood firm: “Unequivocally a financial decision.”
• Stephen Colbert himself also questioned the network’s reasoning, pointing to CBS’s $16 million settlement with Trump over a 60 Minutes lawsuit.
• The Late Show’s final episode airs May 21, with Byron Allen’s Comics Unleashed taking over the slot the following night.

David Letterman has never been shy about saying exactly what he thinks, and when it comes to CBS canceling The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, he has plenty to say.

In a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times published Monday, the late-night legend unloaded on the network that was once his professional home — calling its executives “lying weasels” and flatly accusing them of hiding the real reason Colbert’s show got the axe.

“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?'” Letterman told Times journalist Jason Zinoman. “I’m just going to go on record as saying: They’re lying. Let me just add one other thing, Jason. They’re lying weasels.”

CBS has maintained since last July that the cancellation of its flagship late-night franchise was “purely a financial decision” made against a “challenging backdrop in late night.” When the Times went back to CBS after Letterman’s comments, a spokesperson didn’t budge: “Unequivocally a financial decision.” Skydance did not respond to requests for comment.

What Letterman Really Thinks Happened

Letterman’s theory centers on the timing. CBS parent company Paramount was in the middle of finalizing its $8 billion merger with Skydance Media — a deal that required FCC approval, which, in turn, meant it needed to clear the Trump administration without complications. Colbert, one of late night’s most reliably sharp critics of Trump, was, in Letterman’s telling, tossed into the deal as a gesture of goodwill.

He also took direct aim at Skydance CEO David Ellison, previously accusing him of “willy-nilly spending” his billionaire father’s money. In an earlier YouTube interview shortly after the cancellation news broke, Letterman called the whole thing “pure cowardice” and said CBS “did not handle Stephen Colbert, the face of that network, in the way he deserves to have been handled.” He added at the time: “I don’t think it was money. I think it was all to make sure [Ellison] was solid spending dad’s money.”

When he first heard about the cancellation, Letterman said his reaction was simple: “Disbelief.”

“I wondered: What the hell have they done to Stephen Colbert?” he recalled. Then the personal weight of it hit him. “Wait a minute, this used to be my show. It’s like driving by your old neighborhood and realizing that where you used to live, they’re putting up an adult bookstore.”

Letterman hosted The Late Show from its debut on CBS in August 1993 until stepping down in 2015, when Colbert — then coming off a decade-long run on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report — took over. For Letterman, this isn’t just a corporate reshuffling. It’s personal.

He acknowledged, carefully, that the TV landscape has genuinely shifted. “They don’t share the books with me. All of television seems to have been nicked by digital communication and streaming platforms and on and on. TV may be not the money machine it once was,” he said. But he didn’t let that acknowledgment let CBS off the hook. “On the other hand, what about the humanity for Stephen and the humanity of people who love him and the humanity for people who still enjoyed that 11:30 respite?”

He also said he’d be surprised if late-night television in its current form “lasts more than a year” — then softened slightly, adding, “Well, maybe specific shows. I don’t think it’ll ever go away because it’s just the best. It’s humans talking to humans.”

Colbert Has Questions Too

Letterman isn’t alone in his skepticism. In a separate Times interview, Colbert himself addressed the network’s stated reasoning with his characteristic mix of precision and barely-contained frustration.

“I do not dispute their rationale. I do make jokes about it. But I also completely understand why people would say (A) that doesn’t make sense to me and (B) that seems fishy to me,” Colbert said. “The network did it to themselves by bending the knee to the Trump administration over a $20 billion, settled for $16 million, completely frivolous lawsuit.”

That lawsuit stemmed from Trump suing CBS over its 60 Minutes coverage of Kamala Harris during the 2024 presidential election — a case the network ultimately settled for $16 million, a fraction of the original ask. For Colbert, that capitulation set a tone. When CBS announced the cancellation last July, he told his audience plainly: “It’s not just the end of our show, it’s the end of The Late Show on CBS. I’m not being replaced. This is all just going away.”

What Comes Next — and Who Gets the Last Laugh

The Late Show’s final episode airs Thursday, May 21. The night after, Byron Allen’s Comics Unleashed takes over the slot — and the arrangement is, financially speaking, a savvy one for CBS. Allen’s company is buying the airtime and selling its own advertising, meaning the network collects a check without spending anything on production.

Letterman, for his part, has no complaints about Allen himself. Quite the opposite.

“He’s been wildly more successful than any hundred of us,” Letterman said. “I periodically talk to him, and neither he nor I understand how he became a billionaire. God bless him. To hell with CBS. To hell with Skydance. To hell with the Winslow [Ellison] twins or whoever the hell these guys are. But Byron, he’ll still be providing comedy in that time period. I think that’s a valuable bit of resolution here.”

As for his own memories of the show he built, Letterman landed on something unexpectedly bleak. “The band had barely quit playing and they dismantled the set and there were dumpsters on 53rd Street, and as I walked out of the building, I saw the detritus and the debris of my life at CBS being tossed into the dumpster,” he said. “Now, that’s not a pleasant memory. I don’t know, talk to somebody else.”

CBS, meanwhile, isn’t changing its story. But with Letterman and Colbert both publicly calling the explanation into question — and the finale just days away — the network is going to have a hard time making that “financial decision” line stick.

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