Stephen Colbert Reunites ‘Strike Force Five’ To Discuss State of Late-Night TV

By Emily Zemler

Emily Zemler

The band is back together. Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver joined Stephen Colbert on The Late Show for a reunion of Strike Force Five, a podcast the five late-night hosts launched during the 2023 writers strike.

The hosts sat down for a lengthy discussion on the state of late-night TV and the impending cancellation of The Late Show, which will come to an end later this month. During the conversation, Colbert asked if there was an issue they hadn’t touched on yet and Kimmel replied, “The outrage that your show is being thrown off the air? How about that?”

“I’m waiting for angry Stephen to come out,” Kimmel added. “I want to see you go nuts.”

Colbert slightly dodged the issue, replying, “You guys started before I did. Each of your shows you’re doing started before this show. And then you’re going to be here after I’m here. You’re like the candy shell, I’m like the nougat filling, and then somebody came in and just sucked it out.”

“It’s like when your young wife dies,” Kimmel quipped. “Gone too soon.”

Fallon chimed in, “I think it’s odd the way it ended for you. And it’s a bummer because I wanted to do this longer with you.”

“I was quite surprised,” Colbert agreed while Oliver noted that “as someone from a different era of television I can tell you it was some fresh bullshit.”

Elsewhere in the conversation Fallon described late-night TV as something that’s “been around our whole lives.” “It’s part of our lives,” he said. “I never thought it was a job growing up. I just thought Johnny Carson came with the television set. … People want to go to sleep having a good laugh and go to bed happy.”

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