Stephen Colbert Says CBS Didn't Tell Him About 'Late Show' Cancellation: 'They Didn’t Call Me'

The Late Show With Stephen Colbert will officially come to an end in six months. Between then and now, Colbert says he doesn't know what he'll do next, only that all he wants to do right now is figure out how to "gracefully land this plane."

That the 61-year-old late-night TV host is exuding this kind of grace and class is a stark contrast to how CBS brass handled the cancellation of his show, which had been the No. 1 late-night TV show for nine straight years before CBS announced in July that it's pulling the plug, allegedly due to "a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night."

Colbert Says He Wasn't Told About Cancellation

The show was canceled two days after Colbert blasted the network for settling a lawsuit with Donald Trump in the president’s lawsuit against CBS News, to which Colbert had referred to on the air as "a big fat bribe." The settlement came amid Paramount needing the Trump administration's approval to complete its merger with Skydance.

In a new interview with GQ, Colbert revealed nobody at the network reached out directly to inform him that they were canceling his late-night TV show. He said he heard it from his manager.

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"This is not my choice. So I don't know how we're going to land this plane, but people have asked me, 'Well, what do you think you’re going to do next?' And the cleanest and really fullest answer I can give you, not that I don't have thoughts, is, the honest answer is, I just want to land this plane gracefully in a way that I find satisfying, given how much effort we've put into it for the last 10 years."

The GQ writer assumed CBS called him and told him about the cancellation. But they were shocked to learn nobody at the network called Colbert.

"They didn't call me and tell me!" Colbert exclaimed. "My manager told me."

Colbert added, "No. They told him. They told him, and he told me. He said, 'Hey, do you have 15 minutes? I'm going to stop by.' And I said, 'Sure.' So I got off and I said to my assistant, I said, 'Baby Doll — because my manager is James 'Baby Doll' Dixon — 'Baby Doll wants 15 minutes in person?' Usually, like, five minutes on the phone is an hour with him. And I said, 'I'm super tired, I'm really exhausted. Just make sure this doesn’t go too long.'

"So when 15 minutes comes by, my assistant texted me. I said, 'It might be a little longer.' I was so tired. I was lying down on my couch with a pillow over my eyes going, 'Hey, James, what's going on?' I was prone. And he said, 'This is going to be the last season.' So I sat up and was like, 'Oh, okay. Well, that's interesting. I did not expect that.' And then we talked for hours. Because you don't have that moment very often. And then I went home and my wife, who was expecting me home in 15 minutes, and she said, 'That was two and a half hours.' She goes, 'What happened? Did you get canceled?' And I said, 'Yep.' So we sat down, she got me a drink, and we sat and talked about like, 'Okay, what do you want to do next?' That was it."