It was Gandalf who told Frodo, “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” Tolkien superfan Stephen Colbert is making the most of his time left with The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, set to end in May 2026, with his Emmys speech being altogether a victory lap for the show’s ten-year run, a tribute to his departed assistant, and a message of hope in the current political chaos.
At the 77th Emmy Awards, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert received the award for Outstanding Talk Series, beating out Jimmy Kimmel Live! and The Daily Show, the latter of which won in 2024. Upon receiving the award onstage at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles, Colbert delivered a nearly two-minute speech while surrounded by dozens of his colleagues. He expressed gratitude to all who’ve contributed to the show since it premiered ten years ago in September 2015.
You can watch Colbert’s speech below.
Said Colbert: “Thank you for this honor. I want to thank CBS for giving us the privilege to be part of the late night tradition, which I hope continues long after we’re no longer doing this show. I gotta thank these people, those people up there, the 200 incredible professionals, you [all] are the pros from Dover and I’m so proud to be one of you. We gotta thank the people who supported us the last 20 years, Carrie Byalick, James ‘Babydoll’ Dixon. Personally, I want to thank my beautiful wife Evie [Evelyn McGee-Colbert], who is the real brains of the outfit, [and] my three children, Madeline, Peter, John. I want to dedicate this to my mom and dad, her mom and dad, and a young woman who should be here tonight, Amy Cole.”
Amy Cole was Colbert’s longtime assistant until her death in March at the age of 53.
Colbert continued his speech by explaining his intended mission for Late Show, and how that mission transformed through a turbulent political landscape that included not one but two Trump presidencies, the January 6 insurrection, the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, and labor strikes that heavily impacted the entertainment industry in 2023.
“Ten years ago in September of 2015, Spike Jonze stopped by my office. He said, ‘Hey, what do you want this show to be about?’ I said, ‘Spike, I don’t know how you could do it, but I’d kinda like to do a late night comedy show that was about love. And, I don’t know if I ever figured that out, but at a certain point, and you can guess what that point was, I realized that in some ways we were doing a late night comedy show about loss. And that’s related to love, because sometimes you only truly know something when you get the sense that you might be losing it.”
Lest you think Colbert was talking about his time as a late night comedy host, he actually alluded to something bigger than a TV show. “Ten years later, in September of 2025, my friends, I have never loved my country more desperately. God bless America. Stay strong, be brave, and if the elevator tries to bring you down, go crazy and punch a higher floor.”
Though Colbert was gracious and graceful onstage, the bittersweet tone of his speech suggests there are still hurt feelings from this past summer. In July 2025, Colbert announced during his show that CBS is ending The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and putting the entire Late Show franchise to bed. “It’s not just the end of our show, but it’s the end of The Late Show on CBS,” Colbert said from his desk. “I’m not being replaced. This is all just going away.” In a statement by CBS made afterward, the company stated the move to cancel Colbert “is purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night” and that it was “not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.”
Despite CBS’s insistence otherwise, the timing suggests Colbert’s provocations against the Trump administration played a role in Late Show‘s demise. As Esquire’s own Josh Rosenberg explained in July, CBS’ decision was made two days after Colbert criticized CBS and parent company Paramount for settling a lawsuit with President Trump, who accused the network of editing a 60 Minutes interview with the previous vice president Kamala Harris to “tip the scales in favor of the Democratic party” during the 2024 election.
Colbert called Paramount’s move “a big fat bribe” in an opening monologue to one of his shows. This all occurred during a massive merger between Paramount and Skydance Media, the finalization of which was held up by the Federal Communications Commission. Two days later, Colbert was out.
Observers from PBS, Vox, Vanity Fair, even the Writers Guild of America oppose Paramount’s reasoning for cancelling Colbert, believing his statements had everything to do with the end of Late Show. Said the WGA: “Given Paramount’s recent capitulation to President Trump in the CBS News lawsuit, the Writers Guild of America has significant concerns that The Late Show’s cancellation is a bribe, sacrificing free speech to curry favor with the Trump Administration as the company looks for merger approval.”
Colbert and his team will continue producing episodes of The Late Show until May 2026.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.esquire.com ’
