David Letterman may think executives at CBS are “lying weasels,” but that won’t stop him from returning once more to help send off The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
Letterman, 79, will join Colbert, 61, on May 14, CBS announced. His upcoming appearance will be just his second since handing over The Late Show desk to Colbert in 2015. His last appearance in 2023 was a ratings boon for the show during the writers’ strike.
News of Letterman’s return ahead of Colbert’s last show on May 21 also follows a string of incendiary comments about Colbert’s ousting.
On Tuesday, Letterman shaded the network as “lying weasels” for firing Colbert in an extensive interview with The New York Times. “He was dumped because the people selling the network to Skydance said, ‘Oh no, there’s not going to be any trouble with that guy. We’re going to take care of the show. We’re just going to throw that into the deal. When will the ink on the check dry?” Letterman said.
“I’m just going to go on record as saying: They’re lying. Let me just add one other thing. They’re lying weasels,” he added.
Letterman, who hosted The Late Show from 1993 until 2015, has consistently backed his CBS successor since the network announced his show’s ending in July.
Later in the Times interview, Letterman lamented how President Trump’s ongoing feud with late-night has stripped the format bare.
“It’s like driving by your old neighborhood and realizing that where you used to live, they’re putting up an adult bookstore,” Letterman said.
In response to Letterman’s comments, a CBS spokesperson told the New York Times that The Late Show’s cancellation was “unequivocally a financial decision.”
After CBS announced that Colbert’s show would end in May, Letterman’s eponymous YouTube channel posted a 20-minute supercut of all of his jabs at the network throughout his time on late-night. Its caption read, “You can’t spell CBS without BS.”
He later doubled down in a seething monologue on The Barbara Gaines Show, calling Colbert’s ousting “pure cowardice.”
“I think one day, if not today, the people at CBS who have manipulated and handled this, they’re going to be embarrassed, because this is gutless,” he declared.
The veteran talk show host headlines a star-studded slate of Late Show guests in his second-to-last week. The nights leading up to Letterman’s Friday appearance feature guest spots from all four of Colbert’s network late-night compatriots, known as Strike Force Five—Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, Jimmy Fallon, and John Oliver—in addition to appearances from Tom Hanks, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Pedro Pascal.
