Wanda Sykes thinks Stephen Colbert needs to go hard before he’s taken off the air on May.
“The last show, what are you going to do? You’ve got to go the hell off on the last show,” Sykes told Colbert during her Thursday night Late Show appearance. “You got to burn this b---h to the ground,” she said to applause from the audience.
Colbert was momentarily speechless, but then replied, “It’s a lovely theater,” referring to New York City’s historic Ed Sullivan Theater. Sykes was unimpressed.
“I heard they’re turning it into a Walmart, don’t worry about it,” she replied.
Sykes’ comments come after Paramount announced last summer that The Late Show would end in May 2026. Laudatory gestures in response to the Late Show host’s impending exit have been enormous and extensive—so much so that Variety critic Daniel D’Addario wrote an op-ed Thursday suggesting that the host’s guests should calm down with all the tributes.
Backlash to Colbert’s axing came after the timing of Paramount’s announcement coincided with the company’s pending merger with Donald Trump’s billionaire buddy’s company Skydance—and the host’s on-air declaration that the company bent the knee to Trump with a “big fat bribe” following its $16 million settlement with the president over Kamala Harris’ 60 Minutes interview in 2024. Paramount insisted that cutting The Late Show was “purely a financial decision,” however.
But nobody seems to buy the explanation. Sykes told Colbert she would like to see him show a little teeth during his last broadcast. “
You always bring the fire every night, but that last show has to be, like, destruction,” the comedian told him Thursday.
Replied Colbert, “I’m a lover, not a fighter, Wanda.”
Sykes told the Catholic host, “I know you are a man of faith and all that. Love is stronger than hate.” She went on, suggesting a big moment of a different kind, “Maybe your last guest, you bring out the pope.”
Colbert revealed last year that his dream Late Show guest would be a pope. He told GQ that he “always wanted to interview” a pope. “I really wanted to interview Francis. He seemed like a very interesting cat.”
He’s since tried to woo the new, Chicago-born Pope Leo the Fourteenth. “Daddio. Leo, come on. Chicago. Let’s hit some deep dish. We’ll go to a Sox game,” he said at the time.
Unfortunately, Colbert revealed on Thursday that he still hasn’t made any headway with the request. “Do you have a Pope connection?” he asked Sykes, “I want to get Leo on here. He’s ghosting me. He is Holy Ghosting me.”
Ironically, a new poll from NBC News revealed that the late-night host trails only Pope Leo XIV in favorability among a wide range of public figures.
