Jimmy Kimmel, in a tip of the cap to Stephen Colbert, will air a repeat of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” on May 21 — the date of Colbert’s final late-night show on CBS, ending his 11-season run on the network.
Kimmel’s timeslot for next Thursday, May 21, will have a rerun after new episodes air earlier that week (Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday), ABC confirmed. Kimmel is doing so “out of deference to Colbert’s sendoff,” per news site LateNighter.
Kimmel did the same thing in May 2015 for David Letterman’s final show on CBS’s “The Late Show.” Variety has reached out to Kimmel’s reps for comment.
On Monday, May 11, Kimmel will be a guest on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” alongside NBC’s Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers and HBO’s John Oliver. That lineup will reprise the late-night team behind “Strike Force Five,” the podcast the five hosts ran during the concurrent Writers Guild and SAG-AFTRA strikes in 2023. Proceeds from that podcast went toward supporting the crew members of their respective shows as they went without pay because of the work stoppage.
In addition, on Thursday, May 14, Letterman is set to be Colbert’s guest. After hosting “Late Night” on NBC from 1982 to 1993, Letterman moved to CBS and continued hosting “The Late Show” until handing the reins to Colbert upon retirement in 2015.
Other guests stopping by “The Late Show” in its final days include John Krasinski, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Pedro Pascal and Tom Hanks. The show will also feature several special segments in upcoming episodes: “Kids Pitch” with Jenny Slate, Liam Neeson, John Oliver, Isa Briones, Taylor Dearden and The Avett Brothers; a Broadway performance featuring Annaleigh Ashford, Christopher Jackson, Bernadette Peters, Ben Platt and Patrick Wilson; a “Colbert Questionert” taken by Barack Obama; and a performance by The Strokes.
News of CBS’s cancellation of “The Late Show” broke in July 2025. Though the network said it was “purely a financial decision,” many prominent figures called it an act of censorship as the move came during a period when parent company Paramount Global was seeking approval from Donald Trump’s FCC for its sale to Skydance Media. Colbert is a frequent critic of Trump, and Trump has repeatedly celebrated the show’s cancellation.
Love Film & TV?
Get your daily dose of everything happening in music, film and TV in Australia and abroad.
Letterman in particular has been a vocal critic of CBS’s decision, calling the network “lying weasels” in an interview last week with the New York Times: “He was dumped because the people selling the network to Skydance said, ‘Oh no, there’s not going to be any trouble with that guy. We’re going to take care of the show. We’re just going to throw that into the deal. When will the ink on the check dry?’ I’m just going to go on record as saying: They’re lying. Let me just add one other thing, Jason. They’re lying weasels.”
From Variety US