Jimmy Fallon is joining fellow late night host Jimmy Kimmel in airing a rerun Thursday, May 21, out of respect for Stephen Colbert’s final show.
Fallon’s decision not to compete with the last-ever episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert comes a day after Kimmel announced Monday that he would air a repeat episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live! “out of deference to Colbert’s sendoff.”
The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon will pick up with a new episode Friday, May 22, with guest appearances from Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal, alongside musical guest Maluma.
First reported by LateNighter, Kimmel’s decision has some precedence as he previously chose not to take the air in 2015 opposite David Letterman’s final show as host of The Late Show.
It was announced last July that CBS would be canceling the long-running Late Show in what the network described as “financial decision.”
On Monday’s Late Show, Colbert welcomed Kimmel, Fallon, John Oliver and Seth Meyers for a heartwarming reunion filled with laughter and a special tribute to Colbert’s tenure hosting the beloved franchise.
In the months since the cancellation, Colbert has repeatedly taken aim at CBS and its parent company, Paramount Skydance. In one episode, Colbert took a pointed shot at his network’s leadership while also mocking Donald Trump over the so-called Board of Peace’s billion-dollar membership fee, quipping that CBS paid “just $16 million” to “obey” the president.
Paramount decided to cancel Colbert’s show just days before the Trump administration approved the company’s merger with David Ellison’s Skydance. Since then, Colbert has spent time zinging his corporate bosses on his way out the door.
The host, who has long been a Trump antagonist, was highly critical of the Paramount settlement with the president immediately after it was announced in July, calling it “big, fat bribe” and noting that legal experts called Trump’s lawsuit frivolous and without merit.
Days later, CBS revealed that it was canceling the Late Show and Colbert would be leaving the network in May – something that the president had repeatedly called for over the years.
While the network said the decision was purely a financial one due to declining ad revenues for late-night television, CBS staffers claimed it was a continuation of the “Trump shakedown” that began with the settlement.
After departing late night, Colbert’s next role will see him write a new Lord of the Rings film.
It was Peter Jackson who shared the surprise news in March with a video in which he and Colbert announced the project, currently titled The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past.
