Stephen Colbert opened his final Late Show by doing something he’s done more than 1,800 times before—only this time, he let the audience at home in on it.
Colbert appeared at the top of Thursday night’s show in what amounted to a televised version of his customary pre-tape audience warm-up: the private remarks he typically delivers inside the Ed Sullivan Theater before cameras roll.
“Most nights I come out here and I talk to the audience beforehand,” Colbert told the crowd. “And tonight I thought I’d talk to the audience in here and the audience out there at home.”
Colbert used the unscripted-feeling address not to recap the politics surrounding the show’s end, but to talk about the emotional machinery that kept it going.
“This show, I want you to know and you to know, has been a joy for us to do for you,” he said. “In fact, we call this show the joy machine.”
Then, naturally, he turned it into a joke, referencing his music director Louis Cato recently changing The Late Show Band’s name to “The Great Big Joy Machine.”
“Louis stole it from us and we are currently in litigation right now,” Colbert cracked to bandleader Louis Cato. “You better lawyer up, buddy.”
“We call it the joy machine because to do this many shows, it has to be a machine,” Colbert said. “But the thing is, if you choose to do it with joy, it doesn’t hurt as much when your fingers get caught in the gears.”
“I cannot adequately explain to you what the people who work here have done for each other and how much we mean to each other,” he said, before addressing his staff directly: “You are all the great Achilles whom we knew.”
He also drew a distinction between his old Comedy Central persona and the role he came to occupy at CBS.
“On night one of The Colbert Report back in the day, I said anyone can read the news to you. I promised to feel the news at you,” he said. “And I realized pretty soon in this job that our job over here was different. We were here to feel the news with you. And I don’t know about you, but I sure have felt it.”
That line landed as something of a mission statement for Colbert’s Late Show, which premiered in 2015 and, especially after the 2016 election, became one of late night’s most politically engaged programs.
Colbert closed the message by describing the exchange between host, staff, studio audience, and home viewers as what Cato called “a reciprocal emotional relationship.”
“We love doing this show for you,” Colbert said, “but what we really really love is doing this show with you.”
Then, before the finale properly began , Colbert ended with the phrase he said he has used with every studio audience for the last 11 years.
“Have a good show,” he said. “Thanks for being here. And let’s do it, y’all.”
Watch Colbert’s full opening message at the top of this post.
