Stephen Colbert allowed a fellow talk-show veteran to take his seat for one episode as The Late Show nears its end.
Colbert, 61, welcomed Oprah Winfrey, 72, as one of his final guests before his CBS show goes dark next month.
The interview progressed as usual until Winfrey decided to flip the script on the host. “How are you feeling about the whole thing?” Winfrey asked Colbert, referring to the curtains closing on his series on May 21.
“Don’t go all Oprah on me now...” Colbert responded with a smile. Seconds later, the two switched seats.
“This is so exciting,” Winfrey said as she took Colbert’s seat behind his desk.
Winfrey, who hosted her wildly popular, eponymous show for 25 years, then used her signature interview style to probe Colbert on how he’s feeling about his CBS show coming to an end.
The billionaire TV personality began by asking Colbert what he would like to “release” before The Late Show concludes.
“I don’t want to let anything go yet,” Colbert responded after taking a beat. “Because I still have a white knuckle grip on all these people who I love, who I’ve worked with all these years, including those people right over there,” he said, pointing to the show’s band, cameraman, crew workers, and audience.
Winfrey and Colbert compared their individual experiences as talk-show hosts, with Winfrey admitting how much she still misses her audience, 15 years after The Oprah Winfrey Show wrapped up.
Colbert similarly paid tribute to his loyal audience, telling Winfrey, “When you and I are talking to each other, there’s a third person in the conversation and it’s the audience right there. And they are actually doing their job better than you and I can, because they know what their job is and and they’re very committed to their job, which is to listen to what’s going on and having a reaction to it.
“The audience is very pure in their engagement in our conversation,” he continued. “And if you stay tuned to them, you know where the conversation is going.”
Winfrey agreed, echoing his sentiment, “I can honestly say—and I’m sure you can too—that you wouldn’t have been who you are without the audience. I certainly wouldn’t have been who I was..."
“Thank you so much for holding the space for laughter,” she told him, turning to the audience after. “Has he not held the space for laughter for us in our lives and been there for us?”
Colbert has hosted the show since 2015.
