May 21 is Stephen Colbert’s night, and his fellow late-night hosts are ceding the stage to him. Per Variety, Jimmy Fallon is joining Jimmy Kimmel in taking the night of May 21 off in honor of Colbert’s final Late Show, upholding the Strike Force Five solidarity between both hosts, along with Seth Meyers and John Oliver, whose time slots don’t compete with Colbert. NBC and ABC will air reruns that night, offering their audience to their fired competitor, which, according to Kimmel, who appeared on Late Show last night with the rest of the Five—sans Gutfeld from Fox’s The Five, natch—is substantial.
Kimmel argues that while late-night shows are being treated so poorly because of government pressure, it does represent a strong and engaged audience, which is why they should flex their muscle while they can.
“Obviously, Johnny Carson had a lot of people watching one show. We have a lot of shows with, like, 30,000 people watching each one, and it adds up. And people watch us on YouTube now and people have a lot of different options, and yet they still keep coming to us,” said Kimmel on Colbert last night. “And I’ll tell you, when I got knocked off the air for a few days, people cancelled Disney+. Why aren’t you people cancelling Paramount+? Because you didn’t have it in the first place?”
Suggesting a different era of late-night than the contentious ones that preceded it, the hosts clearly see Colbert’s firing as an existential problem. Strike Force Five was a podcast that launched during the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes and showed the five competitors working together to raise money for their striking writers. Last night’s reunion also doubled as the public announcement of the podcast’s first episode since 2023. The new emergency episode hits podcatchers on May 13.
Keep scrolling for more great stories.