Stephen Colbert to play late-night host on CBS's Elsbeth for amusement of cruel gods

The ironic special guest appearance will likely air in the Elsbeth series premiere this October.

By Matt Schimkowitz | August 3, 2025 | 4:33pm

TV News Stephen Colbert

Stephen Colbert to play late-night host on CBS's Elsbeth for amusement of cruel gods

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Trapped in a game of late-night musical chairs for the amusement of the television gods, Stephen Colbert will appear on an upcoming episode of CBS’s Elsbeth, playing a late-night talk show host that presumably didn’t get canceled for being mean to the President. Per Vulture, Colbert will play Scotty Bristol, host of Way Late With Scott Bristol, on an upcoming episode of The Good Fight spin-off. The news comes several weeks after CBS axed The Late Show With Stephen Colbert for “purely financial” reasons that coincided with Colbert accusing CBS’s parent company, Paramount Global, of bribing the President so his F.C.C. would approve a merger between Paramount and Skydance Media.

Colbert has been angling for a role on Elsbeth for months. Earlier this year, Elsbeth star Wendell Pierce appeared on The Late Show, where he promised to make Colbert’s dream of playing a corpse on a network procedural come true. Months later, in the middle of Colbert’s final few months on the network, Pierce appears to have made good on his word. Is that a spoiler for an upcoming episode of Elsbeth or a grim commentary on Colbert’s late-night future? We’ll know when the episode airs in the new season of Elsbeth, which returns to CBS on October 12.