Stephen Colbert Recalls Moment He Found Out ‘The Late Show’ Was Canceled and Delivering the News to His Staff: ‘I Had Sweat Through My Shirt’

Jimmy Kimmel hosted fellow late-night frontman Stephen Colbert on his show Tuesday night, and during the interview, Colbert recalled how he found out “The Late Show” had been canceled and how he told his staff.

Colbert said the news was first delivered to him via a two and a half hour phone call with his manager, James Dixon, who had known for a week prior but didn’t want to tell Colbert while he was on vacation. Colbert then told his wife, who was adamant that he tell his staff as soon as possible.

“She said, ‘Are you going to tell the staff?'” Colbert recalled. “I said, ‘I don’t know. Maybe I will tell them after the summer break.’ She said, ‘You are going to tell them tomorrow.’ I said, ‘I don’t think so.’ She said, ‘I am coming to work with you tomorrow because I think you are telling your staff.’ I get up in the elevator. I had sweat through my shirt. I didn’t want to know anything my staff didn’t know.”

At first, Colbert only told his executive producers so that the rest of the staff wouldn’t be affected while taping. After the episode was shot, Colbert told his crew and the audience, “Nobody leave. We have one more act of the show.”

“My stage manager said, ‘We are done,'” Colbert said. “I said, ‘No, there is one more act of the show. Please don’t let the audience go.’ He said, ‘No, boss, we are done.’ I said, ‘I am aware of that. I am here to tell you there is one more act of the show.'”

Colbert said he was very nervous when going back on stage to deliver the news, made worse by the fact that there was no teleprompter. The late-night host recalls the audience snickering at first, thinking it was a joke. But when he finally said his piece, no one was laughing.

“I was so nervous about doing it,” Colbert explained. “There was nothing on the prompter. I fucked up twice. I had to restart, and the audience thought it was a bit. They started going, ‘You can do it. Come on Steve. You can do it.’ I always messed up on the sentence that told them what was happening. I got to the sentence that told them what was happening, and they didn’t laugh. They didn’t laugh. That is it. That is how I did it.”

In July, CBS announced that “The Late Show” would be canceled after the next TV season, citing the move as a “financial decision.” Some speculated that the move was actually to appease the FCC and ensure a smooth merger between Paramount, CBS’s parent company, and Skydance Media.