One week ahead of the final episode of The Late Show, David Letterman joined Stephen Colbert to commend the end of the late night series.
To really commemorate the occasion, the two hosts made their way to the top of the Ed Sullivan Theater where they threw off a few pieces of set furniture onto none other than CBS‘ eyemark logo.
“I thought maybe tonight’s occasion would be a little sad, being the end of your run here, but this brings true joy to my heart,” Letterman said. “We are up here for the wanton destruction of CBS property.”
“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,” Colbert added. “I never did it, but we’re at the end here, so all bets are off.”
After they threw off the two chairs used to seat Late Show guests and Colbert’s own desk seat, they took turn launching watermelons and a cake from the top of the building. And at the end of the segment, Letterman shared parting words for 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: In the words of the great Ed Murrow, good night and good luck motherfucker.”
Earlier, before they made their way to the roof, Sullivan complimented the Late Show‘s set furniture, and made sure to confirm the pieces were owned by CBS. “This is nice. It’d be ashamed if something happened to this,” he said, before a pool of people joined them on-stage to remove the furniture.
Letterman’s Thursday night appearance was a special one, particularly because he was the original host of The Late Show, leading the series from 1993 to 2015, when Colbert became his successor. His feature on the late night series, too, came after he recently slammed CBS executives as “lying weasels” when discussing the decision to cancel the program.
“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 the New York Times.
When CBS announced The Late Show was ending last year, the network said it was “purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night. It is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.”
Elsewhere in the episode, Letterman joked that while he was backstage on Thursday night, that he ran into someone from CBS, “and then he fired me.”
“I will say, and I have every right to be pissed off, so I’ll 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,” the former Late Show host 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.”
Colbert appeared on the cover of The Hollywood Reporter’s New York issue, where he reflected on his Late Show tenure and noted that he “did not expect it to end this way.”
Letterman’s appearance on the late night series, as noted, arrived exactly one week before Colbert’s final show on May 21. Elsewhere in the lead-up to his departure, the entire Strike Force Five (Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, John Oliver and Seth Meyers) appeared on the show Monday.
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