The accolades for the final season of Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show are rolling in.
The host and the series’ final season earned two awards from the Television Critics Association for Outstanding Achievement in Variety, Talk or Sketch, and the TCA Career Achievement Award. To win the Variety category, The Late Show had to beat several heavyweights, including d The Daily Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Late Night with Seth Meyers, The Muppet Show revival, and Saturday Night Live were also among the nominees.
Colbert’s Career Achievement Award places him among late-night legends Johnny Carson and David Letterman, making him only the third late-night host to have received the award. Other recipients include Walter Cronkite, Lucille Ball, Jim Henson, Norman Lear, and SNL creator Lorne Michaels.
The wins come as Emmy voters cast their ballots for his show’s nine category nominations this year, including for Outstanding Variety Series, Writing, Directing, Production Design, Lighting, and Editing.
The late-night series, which ended following its host’s feud with the president and its network’s parent company’s merger with Trump-friendly conglomerate Skydance, will face off with Kimmel, Oliver, and Stewart in this year’s awards.
Making the race more unpredictable this year is the Television Academy’s combining the Outstanding Talk Series and Outstanding Scripted Series categories into just one, now called Outstanding Variety Series.
Colbert’s former team, though left in the lurch by CBS ahead of the Emmys, has felt the love in the industry since then. Emmys host and Law & Order star Mariska Hargitay revealed this week that the awards ceremony hired Colbert’s former Late Show writers to pen the ceremony’s comedy.
“I’m working with an incredible team of writers—the writers from Colbert,” she told Deadline on Tuesday. “We’ve been meeting a lot and discussing a lot and pitching a lot of ideas. We’re pitching so many ideas.”
