Stephen Colbert says firing from ‘The Late Show’ might have “saved my life”
Stephen Colbert is certainly feeling sunnier than most when faced with losing their job, as he has joked that CBS firing him from The Late Show might have “saved my life”.
The talk show host is set to front his final episode of The Late Show on May 21st, bringing an end to CBS’ long-running talk show after over three decades.
Despite the inevitable sadness that the end of his tenure on the show will bring, Colbert was in remarkably high spirits during a new interview with People, as he said CBS may have “saved my life”.
The 62-year-old explained: “It takes a lot of bone marrow to do the show every day, and now I’ll be stepping down with enough time, enough energy to do other things that I want to do.”
Prime among those new ventures are his plans to write a new Lord of the Rings film, alongside his son, Peter, tentatively titled The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past.
However, audiences will not be seeing the results of this anytime soon, as Colbert seems keen to take a break before starting out on any new projects.
He described the process of presenting The Late Show as “like a flaming toboggan ride every day and the trick is to not hit any trees on your way down the mountain before 12:30.”
Continuing the metaphor, he added: “It takes almost the entirety of my brain to do this show. So we’ll land this plane and we’ll check out the view from there,” before admitting, “But I’m available. Yes.”
The cancellation of Colbert’s show has been the subject of much controversy, with CBS insisting it was “purely a financial decision” when announcing the move last year, but with a high level of speculation that it could be to do with the network’s legal settlement with Donald Trump, on top of their planned merger with Paramount and Skydance.
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