Stephen Colbert was honored at the 2026 Writers Guild Awards with the Walter Bernstein Award, given to someone who has used creativity, grace and bravery to confront social injustice in the face of adversity.
But the Late Show host, known for his sharp criticism of the Trump administration, whose show is coming to an end in a little over two months for what network CBS called a “purely financial decision” amid a challenging linear TV environment, rejected comparisons between himself and Bernstein.
Talking about researching Bernstein ahead of receiving the award, Colbert said he wasn’t sure why he didn’t realize that the Hollywood “blacklist was not a government policy.”
He continued, “The blacklist wasn’t a law or a regulation or an executive order. It was a voluntary industry-wide agreement to deny work to left-leaning artists out of fear that certain members of the government might publicly attack the parent corporation of these artists for the union that they belong to. It was that threat, only the threat, of trouble, that ended so many careers. And now while to be associated with Mr. Bernstein in any way is a great honor, I want to be clear that I do not deserve the implied parallel.”
“This is not the 1950s,” he said. “This is not the Red Scare. And, as far as I can tell, no one in late night is fomenting a revolution. As we know, the revolution will not be televised. It was going to be televised, but then Paramount bought it.”
To laughs, Colbert joked, poking fun at reports about The Late Show‘s financial losses, “Evidently, the revolution was losing, like, $40 million a year — it had to go. I guess the revolution is thinking about starting a Substack.”
Beyond those initial quips, though, Colbert didn’t speak about political forces that some have suggested may have contributed to the end of his show, but he did look back on his time working with Robert Smigel, who presented him with the honor and whom Colbert worked alongside on the short-lived Dana Carvey Show, and he used the time onstage to praise his 20 writers, who were not nominated for the Writers Guild Awards this year, naming and listing fun facts about each one and sharing jokes they’d written that didn’t make it to air.
The jokes including barbs about the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade (“no aborts, good luck”), Donald Trump saying that if Ivanka Trump wasn’t his daughter he might “be dating her” and claims that Louis C.K., during the #MeToo era reports of sexual misconduct by the comedian, took off all of his clothes to masturbate: “Oh my God, he masturbates like a toddler poops.”
He also shared a cut joke about OpenAI allowing users to create adult content, with one analyst arguing that the move could “boost” OpenAI as it was urging people to sign up for paid subscriptions.
“Ugh, that is so desperate,” Colbert said, reading the joke. “It’s like when McDonald’s changed their slogan to ‘we suck dick now.’”
The line was cut several times by Colbert, who noted ad sales didn’t object to the joke, but wouldn’t die among his staff and even made it onto a Christmas gift sweatshirt boasting the McDonald’s logo and the caption, “We suck dick now.” Pulling out the garment, Colbert put it on for the rest of his speech.
“If you liked any of these ideas, please employ these lovely folks,” Colbert said of his staff, which like the host will be out of work after the last Late Show airs on May 21. “They are the best writing staff I have ever known at any show, and I have loved our time together, which wasn’t as much time as I would like,” he said. “I started in late night as one of them. Thanks to Robert, Dana Carvey and Jon Stewart, and many other people, I ended up in front of the camera every night, which is a very good job with its own responsibilities, meaning you can’t be in the writers’ room as much as you used to be.”
“And to some, hosting may seem like a hard job, and sometimes it is, but what’s also hard is hearing the laughter from the room down the hall and not be able to go in,” he added. “If you’ve ever been lucky enough to be in that room, you will always want to be in that sound. And what is really gonna be hard is missing these people, who despite the fresh hell — whatever it is — that the news washes in, make that beautiful sound happen every day. So to them, and all of you, and Walter Bernstein, and to our guild, thank you so much.”
Despite CBS’ claim that the decision to end The Late Show was merely “financial,” there’s been widespread speculation about possible other reasons for the cancellation, as Colbert has been a prominent critic of President Donald Trump and, just days before news broke of the Late Show‘s end, Colbert criticized CBS parent ocmpany Paramount’s controversial $16 million settlement of a lawsuit filed by Trump over a 60 Minutes interview with his 2024 election opponent, former Vice President Kamala Harris. When announcing The Late Show‘s end, Paramount insisted the move was “not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.”
Some observers remained unconvinced, including the Writers Guild, which a day after the cancellation was announced, asked New York state Attorney General Letitia James to open an inquiry into “potential wrongdoing” at Paramount Global, expressing concerns that getting rid of the Late Show was a form of bribery.
“Cancellations are part of the business, but a corporation terminating a show in bad faith due to explicit or implicit political pressure is dangerous and unacceptable in a democratic society,” the union stated. “Paramount’s decision comes against a backdrop of relentless attacks on a free press by President Trump, through lawsuits against CBS and ABC, threatened litigation of media organizations with critical coverage and the unconscionable defunding of PBS and NPR.”
Trump celebrated the news of the Late Show cancellation on his Truth Social platform.
“I absolutely love that Colbert got fired,” the president wrote the day after the cancellation was announced. “His talent was even less than his ratings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next.”
Less than two months after Colbert announced the Late Show was being canceled, the series won the best talk show Emmy.
In that speech, Colbert said that while he had initially set out to make a late night show about love, he later realized “we were doing a late night comedy show about loss. That’s related to love, because sometimes you only truly know how much you love something when you get a sense you might be losing it. Ten years later, in September 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.”
While Colbert has not yet announced his next move (he insisted at the Emmys that he was focused on wrapping up the show as “beautifully” as he could), he told fellow late night host Seth Meyers in January that the end “feels real now” and he’s “not thrilled with it.” Colbert added that while he’ll miss the people he works with, some of whom he’s collaborated with for decades, he vowed that he and his longtime collaborators would “do something else together.”
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