One day after the final episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Stephen Colbert made a surprise return to television in Monroe, Michigan, alongside Jack White.
The long-running late-night show aired for the last time on Thursday (May 21), after Colbert announced on air last summer that CBS had cancelled it in what the network described as “purely a financial decision”.
During his final monologue, Colbert reflected on his 2015 appearance on Michigan’s public access station, Only In Monroe, where he performed a test run of The Late Show “for an audience of 12 people,” with Eminem as a guest.
“Show business being what it is these days, that’s probably where you’ll see me next,” he said in the monologue.
However, it turns out he wasn’t joking. On Friday night (May 22), he returned to the station on the 11:35pm time slot alongside the show’s regular hosts, Michelle Baumann and Kaye Lani Rae Rafko Wilson, as well as guests like Detroit native Jack White and actors Steve Buscemi and Jeff Daniels.
“Hello, also welcome. It’s time for another edition of Only in Monroe. I’m your guest… host Stephen Colbert,” he told the unsuspecting Monroe audience. “Since I was last here in Monroe, Michigan, I spent 11 years as the primary host of ‘The Late Show With Stephen Colbert’, which came to an end last night. It’s been an excruciating 23 hours without being on TV, so I am grateful to be here on Monroe Community Media before they are also acquired by Paramount.”
This is not the first time… Stephen Colbert also hosted ‘Only in Monroe’ in July 2015, where he pretended not to know who Eminem was (kept calling him Marshall) and quizzed him on his knowledge of Bob Seger songs. pic.twitter.com/XTK4A1z5pE
— Blue Georgia (@BlueGeorgia) May 23, 2026
He then went on to introduce White as his volunteer “music director”, who sat on the side of the stage with a boombox and a reel-to-reel.
Colbert later FaceTimed Byron Allen, whose show Comics Unleashed is replacing The Late Show in the 11:35pm slot on CBS. Buscemi then appeared in a commercial for a local pizza place called Buscemi’s, assuring the audience that he is in no way connected to the restaurant.
Later in the episode, Jeff Daniels appeared for a cooking segment where he taught Colbert how to make a pita sandwich using only random ingredients found in the fridge.
When the episode ended, Colbert, White and Daniels dismantled the makeshift set and brought it to a nearby dumpster for burning, but first they had to receive permission from “the fire marshal”, prompting Colbert to Facetime Marshall Mathers, a.k.a. Eminem, his Only in Monroe guest in 2015. “Stephen, Marshall here, you’re absolutely clear to burn that motherfucker down,” the rapper said.
“Well, that’s a wrap,” Colbert said as the episode concluded. “Thanks for watching in Only in Monroe, and if you watched any of my other talk shows over the years, thanks for watching those too. Until we see each other again, I’ll be only here, only on Only in Monroe.”
Many have speculated that the move to cancel The Late Show was politically motivated, with Colbert among the most prominent critics of the Trump administration.
Following the show’s last episode, Donald Trump compared Colbert to a “dead person” and threw him into a bin in an AI-generated video.
Robert De Niro was equally unflinching when it came to Trump during his last appearance on Colbert’s talk show, referencing the unreleased files relating to convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
De Niro had swapped places with Colbert, and asked him “What number were you thinking of?”, in reference to a question the host asked many guests over the years.
“There’s a hint as to what the answer is,” Colbert replied, “because whenever somebody answers the question and gives the wrong answer, I always say no; and when I give the right answer, which has happened at least twice — Meryl Streep and Ethan Hawke guessed correctly — and Ethan Hawke goes immediately, ‘I know what it is. It’s three.’ That’s the number I was thinking of.”
“OK,” De Niro said. “Because I thought it would have been two million point five, or two and a half million. That’s the number of Epstein files Trump still hasn’t released.” The punchline drew rapturous applause from the studio audience.
Bruce Springsteen also made a jab directed at Trump during his interview on the penultimate episode on Wednesday (May 20), and said Colbert was “the first guy in America who lost his show because we got a president who can’t take a joke”, and “because [Paramount-Skydance owners] Larry and David Ellison feel they need to kiss his ass to get what they want”.
Trump publicly responded to the news of Late Night‘s cancellation at the time, writing: “I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert!”
Colbert hit back at the President on his next show, feigning outrage and saying: “How dare you, sir? Would an untalented man be able to compose the following satirical witticism?”.
Turning to a camera marked “Eloquence Cam”, Colbert deadpanned in a New York accent: “Go fuck yourself”.
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