The Late Show’s series finale was very “intense,” recalled the show’s director Yvonne De Mare.
De Mare was hired to take over the director’s chair just three days before Paramount announced that Stephen Colbert’s show would end 10 months later. She told The Wrap on Tuesday, “I was like, ‘Well, OK. I got the job, and the show’s going away.” Those months kicked into hyperdrive right after the news, De Mare told the site.
De Mare worked with Colbert as an assistant director on The Colbert Report and followed the host to The Late Show franchise in 2015. “There was a lot infused in that 10 months,” she said, “But the craziness really kicked in in the last eight weeks, when we were doing lots of pre-tapes and all these different celebrities wanted to get on to get their last moments with Stephen.”
The end of Colbert’s contract and The Late Show franchise was announced following the host’s heated feud with Donald Trump, who had repeatedly called for his firing. Paramount announced it would end the show ahead of MAGA-friendly company Skydance’s acquisition of the company, but insisted the decision was made for “purely financial reasons.” Colbert had just slammed Paramount on air for “bribing” the president three days before.
The host stopped short of saying his show was canceled to appease the president, but told the New York Times that “something changed,” since he’d originally been offered a longer contract less than two years earlier.
The director said the show’s crew would work from 6 a.m. to midnight for one sketch, then do it all again the next day for a new sketch.
“It was a nonstop hamster wheel of stuff,” she recalled, leading up to the “intense” experience of putting on the show’s final episode. The wormhole sketch in which a green interdimensional portal of late-night cancellation appears to threaten Jimmy Kimmel, John Stewart, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver took “an insane amount of work,” De Mare said.
“Jake Plunkett directed the portal stuff, which he had been working on for months,” she said, “and even during rehearsal, we didn’t have the final version.”
The bit was ultimately executed flawlessly, the director called, but the major goodbye show, which included appearances by Paul McCartney, Bryan Cranston, Paul Rudd, Ryan Reynolds, and more, was not without chaos—so much so that the crew didn’t realize the show was over until it was over.
“It took me a minute” to realize the show was done, for the last time,” she said. “Because of everything leading up to that day, I think nobody looked at it as the last show. We all just hunkered down trying to get through that day,” she continued. “We had been so focused on getting to that point that it became a race-to-the-finish kind of thing.”
“For 10 months, it was just nonstop craziness,” she continued. “When we finally faded to black, it was sort of like, ‘Oh my goodness. It’s really fade to black this time. Wow.’”
During the finale itself, De Mare was so hyper-focused on getting a shot of the crew members on stage before cutting to Colbert and McCartney that she forgot to capture the waving crew members in the control room, who were waiting to be seen. “I edited over everybody in the control room that was waving,” she lamented. “I felt terrible for everybody that worked so hard. But they understood.”
In the end, the team was able to share a “beautiful moment” when the show was over, De Mare said, during which they “looked at each other and hugged, and then tears started.”
She added, “It was really a beautiful moment.” Those beautiful moments would have little chance to simmer, as Colbert revealed that he and his show would have to pack up and clear the premises “within a week.”
He told his fellow late-night hosts ahead of his last episode on their reunion podcast in May, “I think they’re going to start tearing s--t out immediately… I know my staff is not paid, like the next day.”
