Seth Meyers and Stephen Colbert are scheduled to make a little late-night history this week when the Late Night host makes his first-ever appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
On Wednesday, Meyers will make the five-block trek from his offices at 30 Rock to the Ed Sullivan Theater to play guest to Colbert for the first time in his near decade-long tenure as host of The Late Show.
It’s just the latest example of one host showing up on another’s show, in yet another sign that the Late Night Wars that ruled the early 1990s (when David Letterman did battle with Jay Leno) and the early 2010s (when Leno duked it out with Conan O’Brien) are a thing of the past.
We’re coming up on the one-year anniversary of the launch of Strike Force Five, the podcast that saw Meyers, Colbert, John Oliver, and the Jimmys (Kimmel and Fallon) band together to help support their staffers, who were out of work and on the picket lines. Since then, seeing any combination of two or more of these hosts together has become rather commonplace.
In April, Meyers was a guest on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, where he admitted that he finds it “unsettling to watch a talk show host as a guest on a different talk show.” Kimmel paid Meyers a visit the following month.
In early May, Kimmel also welcomed Jon Stewart (as did Kimmel’s kids, who thought the part-time Daily Show host was Bruce Springsteen). When John Mulaney debuted his six-episode Netflix series Everybody’s in LA, Stewart—and Letterman—came along for the ride. Meyers and Oliver, meanwhile, share the stage once a month as part of a residency at New York City’s Beacon Theatre.
While Wednesday will mark Meyers’ first official visit to Colbert’s version of The Late Show, he’s no stranger to the studio. Between 2008 and 2013, the former SNL star made eight appearances on Late Show with David Letterman. Nor is it the first time Meyers has been interviewed by Colbert in an official capacity; he was a guest on The Colbert Report way back in 2011.
Making the feat all the more impressive for Meyers is the fact that his own show is taping this week, too. LateNighter reached out to Meyers’ team to confirm whether the interview was pre-taped, or if the host will be high-tailing it back to his own show (which tapes one hour after Colbert). We did not hear back before our deadline.
