Stephen Colbert will receive a prestigious new award for refusing to cave to censorship by Trump’s administration.
The former Late Show host, whose termination was announced just days after he called out the show’s parent company, Paramount, for paying Trump $16.5 million to settle his lawsuit against 60 Minutes, will receive the Columbus Foundation’s anti-censorship award.
Colbert will be presented the award at the 47th annual American Book Awards on September 26 at the University of California-Berkeley campus. Last year’s recipient was the axed former MSNBC host Joy Reid, whose show was cut during the revamped network’s bloodbath firings that year.
Colbert’s honor is part of the awards body’s initiative to recognize “outstanding literary achievement from the entire spectrum of America’s diverse literary community.” The winners, which this year include Books & Books founder Mitchell Kaplan, are selected by a committee of writers.
The achievement comes after Colbert’s Late Show aired its last episode on May 21. The host continued to slam Trump amid continuous threats and insults from the administration and even after his show’s cancellation was announced last July.
Though he consistently expressed his “gratefulness” for having been on air with the network for over a decade, Colbert also still regularly called out the network during the show’s final months.
On his last episode, Colbert pulled one last prank when The Late Show house band, Louis Cato and the Great Big Joy Machine, played the Vince Guaraldi Trio’s well-known “Linus and Lucy” music in a segment where the host discussed Lee Mendelson Film Productions’ stringent enforcement of its copyright on the song.
CBS was forced to pay a large undisclosed sum for the usage, which Colbert and Lee Mendelson arranged to benefit his favorite charity, World Central Kitchen.
The former late-night host kept a low profile since The Late Show ended, but announced new projects that show he’s looking to branch out: voiceover roles in Star Trek: Starfleet Academy and The Testaments, and his development work on a new Lord of the Rings movie.
His award also follows a March poll that showed the former host was the only celebrity with as much popularity as the current pope.
The Late Show will compete for Emmys for the last time on September 14.
