Prior to the 77th Emmy Awards, Stephen Colbert had never won an award for The Late Show. Colbert has won Emmys for other shows and The Late Show won Emmys with other hosts, but as a duo, there’s been zilch. That was bound to change this year, after Colbert’s contract with CBS wasn’t renewed. Not only did Colbert get fired, but The Late Show in its entirety was canceled. After June 2026, the show will cease to exist.
Given the likely political motivations behind this decision from CBS and Paramount under the new ownership of Skydance, Colbert’s cancellation was particularly brutal. Maybe too often, Colbert has been hailed as both martyr and hero for the liberal cause in the fight against Donald Trump. Because of the near mythic status Colbert has reached, it became apparent months ago that he’d be the front-runner in the Outstanding Talk Series category. I went so far as to write — repeatedly, sorry — that he was guaranteed to win “the sympathy Emmy.” More generous interpretations could read it as an Emmy win as politically motivated as the cancellation of The Late Show.
I mean, it was only a race against The Daily Show and Jimmy Kimmel Live! which made it a relatively narrower field than many of the other categories. But what really guaranteed the win was the endless fanfare around Colbert. For better or worse, Colbert became a symbol of resistance to autocracy.
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And while Colbert technically won his first Emmy for The Late Show at the Creative Arts Emmys last weekend, this win for Outstanding Talk Series was The Big One. Despite receiving a cringe standing ovation at the beginning of the show, Colbert accepted the historic Emmy with the grace he’s come to be known for.
After shutting down a “Stephen!” chant from the audience, he offered up the following: “Thank you for this honor. I want to thank CBS for giving us the chance to be part of the late-night tradition, which I hope continues long after we’re doing this show. At a certain point, I realized that we were doing a late-night comedy show about loss. And that’s related to love because sometimes you only truly know how much you love something when you get a sense that you might be losing it. Ten years later in September 2025, my friends, I have never loved my country more desperately.”
“God Bless America. Stay Strong! Be Brave! And if the elevator tries to bring you down, go crazy and punch a higher floor!”
To cut my own cynical bullshit for a moment, the speech was actually touching. It must be incredibly hard to eulogize your own show alongside staff who will be losing their livelihood — especially under host Nate Bargatze’s sinister time crunch. While we still have many more months of Colbert on air, his graceful acceptance speech reminded me that his empathetic demeanor will be sorely missed in the future.
