Before Stephen Colbert began taping yesterday’s episode of The Late Show, he took time out for his usual audience Q&A. When one fan asked Colbert how he deals with carrying the weight of the show on his shoulders, he very humbly deflected. The host pointed out that he shares the workload with two hundred of his best friends, acknowledging his staff and crew.
While that’s surely an evergreen sentiment from the host, the audience wasn’t aware at the time how especially poignant those words from Colbert would be on this particular night. In fact, it wasn’t until the end of the taping—after Colbert had performed a monologue, talked politics with Adam Schiff, and interviewed Anthony Carrigan—that The Late Show’s otherwise business-as-usual taping took a turn.
“They said ‘We’re going to tape an alternate cold open,’” recalls Claire DeSantis, who attended the taping. Fans expected another piece of comedy.
“The [cancellation] announcement was a complete surprise,” DeSantis tells LateNighter.
Up until that point, from the audience’s perspective, the biggest drama to emerge during the taping was the fact that musician Noah Cyrus didn’t appear, despite The Late Show’s opening credits and Colbert himself touting her as a guest. (Cyrus had pre-taped her appearance. A regular practice for The Late Show, it’s not unusual for audience members to be left scratching their heads when a promised celeb doesn’t appear.)
“When they said ‘We’re going to film another open,’ I thought it was going to be a surprise, and they would bring Noah Cyrus out,” says DeSantis.
Colbert did several retakes at the top of the cold open, stumbling as he performed a lighthearted turn toward the camera for a cheesy faux-surprise “Oh, hey, everybody!”
After those false starts, Colbert finally delivered the full cold open—eliciting raucous boos and cries from the studio audience. Colbert recorded it only once. The shocked reaction in the Ed Sullivan Theater heard on the broadcast is indeed the crowd finding out for the first time.
“It was a complete shock to everybody,” says DeSantis. “Even as not a regular watcher, I was getting emotional, because it was so sad, and you could tell that… this is probably a huge shock for everybody.”
After taping the segment, Colbert got up and walked to where his wife, Evie McGee-Colbert, was watching from the side of the stage. In a sweet and emotional moment, Colbert hugged and kissed his wife, who was seen wiping away tears.
With that, the show was over; as these tapings usually go, the audience was quickly ushered out.
“It felt like a weird ending,” says DeSantis. “We all just started to file out.”
Once out of the Ed Sullivan Theater, several fans took right to the web to react, sharing their bewilderment on social media. Shortly afterwards, CBS issued a formal announcement, and The Late Show released Colbert’s somber cold open to the masses.
For at least some in the studio audience, thoughts later turned to Colbert and the team at The Late Show, who had put on an hour’s worth of entertainment as if nothing was out of the ordinary.
“How did they get through the whole episode?” DeSantis now wonders in hindsight.
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