Taylor Tomlinson has already spoken publicly about why she walked away from After Midnight, the Stephen Colbert-produced late-night show that immediately followed The Late Show for two seasons on CBS.
In her new book, she reveals what happened immediately after she made the decision to leave—including an emotional phone call with Colbert that she says left her “shaking with shame.”
In Actually, Nevermind, Tomlinson writes that she decided during the show’s second season that the punishing combination of hosting After Midnight during the week and touring as a standup on weekends had become unsustainable.
But leaving wasn’t as simple as deciding she wanted out. Nearly 200 people worked on the CBS show, Tomlinson writes, and she worried her departure could cost them their jobs.
“I almost stayed for that reason alone,” she writes.
When Tomlinson finally broke the news, she first told two of After Midnight’s executive producers. She came prepared not only with an explanation, but with a list of comedians she believed could replace her.
Tomlinson says she wanted CBS to keep the show going with a new host and offered to help make that happen, including speaking with the network, doing press, and personally calling potential replacements.
According to Tomlinson, just hours after that conversation, the producers texted her with unexpected news: CBS had decided to pick up After Midnight for another season.
“So we told Stephen,” one message read. “He is calling you.”
What followed, Tomlinson writes, was a difficult conversation with Colbert, who produced the series through his Spartina Productions.
“I spent that call with Stephen (Mr. Colbert? Not sure how to address him now) crying and apologizing,” she writes, adding that she got off the phone “shaking with shame.”
Tomlinson doesn’t recount what Colbert said during the call, but writes that she understood why he was upset. Colbert had previously told her she could call him if she ever needed to talk, and she had not approached him before deciding to leave.
“I wasn’t trying to blindside him,” she writes. “I was just afraid to bother someone so important and busy.”
Tomlinson says she subsequently heard a similar response from others involved with the show: they wished she had talked to them before making a final decision, believing changes might have been made to keep her.
She writes that she had, in fact, previously proposed changes. After getting sick during the show’s first season, Tomlinson says she suggested bringing in a guest host who could fill in if she ever needed a day off. According to her account, she was told CBS would instead air a rerun and the crew would lose a day’s work. She raised the guest-host idea again during Season 2 and says she was told the network would never agree to it.
CBS chose not to continue After Midnight without her. When the cancellation was announced in March 2025, Colbert offered no hint on air of the difficult conversation Tomlinson now describes.
“CBS just gave us a pickup for a third season, but Taylor has decided to return to standup full-time,” he told viewers. “And as someone who’s done this job for twenty years, I completely respect her enormously as a comedian, and for making a very hard decision on how to best use her time and her talent.”
Tomlinson, meanwhile, writes that she still carries guilt over what happened, even as she believes remaining at the show would have come at too high a personal cost.
