Inside Late Night with Mark Malkoff - Trump vs. Kimmel: Why This Time Is Different [LateNighter Roundtable Podcast]

Episode Date: April 30, 2026

Jimmy Kimmel is back in the Trump administration’s crosshairs, facing calls for cancellation after jokes he made days before the White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting. In the April edition of LateNighter's monthly rountable, Jon Schneider, Bill Carter, and Mark Malkoff break down the fallout, how Kimmel is responding, and why this moment feels different. Plus: Stephen Colbert’s final three weeks, CBS’s post-Colbert plans, YouTube’s new late night plans, and more.

Hello, everybody, and welcome to Late Niders Roundtable for April 2026. My name is John Schneider from Late Nider. So excited to be back with you this month to talk about the biggest moments in late night television, and there is a lot to get into this month. So let's bring in our guests here today on our roundtable. And first up, it is the host of Inside Late Night with Mark Malkoff. Mark Malkoff is here. Mark, how are you? I'm doing great. Nice to see you both.

Great to see you, Mark. and of course late-nighters editor at large is here. Bill Carter, Bill, how are you? Well, I've never been more at sort of C about what's going to happen in late night, but it's certainly interesting to talk about. Yeah, let's dive right into what's going on right now. So we should note that we are recording Tuesday afternoon, April 28th at 4 o'clock, and this is certainly a moving story.

So this will be probably put up a few days after we report, and hopefully everything we discuss will still be relevant. But essentially, I'll fill you in on the latest that we know that's happening with Kimmel's show. So last weekend was the White House Correspondence Dinner or was intended to be, at least it went on partway through. Of course, there was a horrific assassination attempt at the White House Correspondence Dinner that halted proceedings and forced the dinner to be rescheduled. Prior to this, we had on Thursday evening on Kimmel's show on ABC.

he did a bit in his monologue where he did an alternative White House correspondence dinner being the host of the dinner because they did not have a traditional comedian as the special guest this year. It was O'S Perlman, who's a mentalist. He's a mentalist. And, you know, Kimmel thought it would be a good idea to have some jokes. And if you haven't seen the bit, the way it went was, is that he would do his jokes and then the jokes would cut to reactions from people in the Trump administration or the Trump family from other events. And one of the jokes that he made was about Melania, saying Melania, you have a glow like an expectant widow. And this was obviously prior to any assassination attempt that occurred over the weekend. And now this has been turned into quite the

media storm as Melania herself has called for Kimmel to be removed from the host of his show and his show to go off the air, similar to what we saw in the fall. This led Trump to say the same thing. And now, car, you know, doing some inquiries as to, you know, reviewing the contracts and what's going to be happening in the future with the affiliates. So this is an incredibly fast-moving story, Bill, and I would love to get your take on what's been going on right now with Kimmel and the Trumps. A couple of things. It's not the affiliates. It's the stations that are owned by ABC that car is now targeting because he didn't get anywhere with the affiliates when he tried the first time. here he's trying to intimidate the Disney company by saying he's going to, you know, question their licenses,

start the process to question their licenses, which is an extremely rare process that has almost never been done and doesn't really have any legitimate reason for it. There's no rationale for it because they aren't really, they can't really say it's because we want to fire Jimmy Kimmel. They can't really say that. So apparently they're going to try to say, we're going to question Disney's DEI policies or something like this. There's a pretense. It's all about really intimidation and pressure on Disney. That's what it's about because this would take a very long time before this could ever have any effect. And I don't think it ever would because it seems like there's no real rationale for it.

But I think that's the idea. The idea is, okay, you want to protect this guy. We're going to make it really tough for you. You're going to have to use your lawyers and spend money. money and et cetera. And I think it's very interesting and notable that the first night that Kimmel was under fire for this, Disney said nothing. There was no talk of taking him off. There's no question about him going on the air. And they have said nothing, but he's our guy. They're defending him. And I don't think they will back off at all. I don't think he'll back off at all. I think this is now

a fool's errand by the administration. But they want to keep the pressure on. They want to make it tough. It's another thing for them to complain about. And also, Trump happens to be a person who cannot let something go like this. This is, he has to have retribution. If he's been offended, if he's been challenged, if he's been criticized and made fun of, he doesn't let it go. And it's quite interesting to me that the same exact day that they did this attack on Disney, they filed another, I guess they indicted James Comey again.

They try to, a guy who's now been, I don't know how many times they try to invite him and prosecutors say there's no case and grand jury say there's no case, but they did it again because it's retribution. And it's the same thing with Jimmy Kimmel. Trump hates Jimmy Kimmel. He wants to get him off the air. And that's what this is about. And I know Jimmy Kimmel and he's not going to back down either. He's definitely not. There's a monologue that's been put up from Monday night on YouTube that is already racking up millions of views. And part of that monologue is, you know, Kimmel talk. about this whole entire situation and him actually playing a clip from back in the day of Trump talking about how much he loves Jimmy Kimmel, which I thought was a really good moment there to pull that one out of the archives. Mark, what do you think about this whole situation? It's just, all this talk about the firing is just going to help Kimmel's ratings, him being relevant in people's eyes even more than he already was. And when people talk about late night being dead and dying, this is an example of late night being is relevant.

as you can get. It's really hard to think back in the day, like when someone like Johnny Carson, you know, Carson would go after people. I mean, Ford was upset with Carson's jokes. Jimmy Carter's relatives were upset. Nancy Reagan called the show twice. But for the president to publicly be upset like this, you could not get better publicity than what Kimmel is getting. And I really did think he, Bill, what did you think? I thought he was going to apologize. I thought he handled it like it was kind of a business as usual for him. Like he, he did not, he made a few statements that were kind of serious about it, but he worked jokes in with that too. He did not come out and say, look, that was a terrible thing to say anything

like that. He said, of course I wasn't talking about violence. I, you know, I'm personally spoken out about gun violence my whole life. So he did not in any way make any concession like that. And I thought he stood very tall and didn't bend at all. And actually it was funny. I thought the show was good. I thought he did a very good show. If the thing didn't happen at the correspondence dinner, I don't think anybody would have talked about the bed.

I don't think. Not at all. Not at all. Not at all. And there's a huge difference, right? Because what happened with the Charlie Kirk stuff was Kimmel discussing the reaction to it after the fact. This time they're going back before this even happened. And Kimmel had, you know, he did.

he didn't apologize, but he did explain the joke. He said that this was not a call for assassination. The joke was intended to be a play on the difference in age between Melania and Donald Trump. And that's where he was looking at this thing. Now they're using this as a tool to go back in time and say, well, you actually are pro-political violence. And that's not true. No, and it's interesting because people, certainly the Republican side, are taking up this cause like, oh, he was literally encouraging someone to kill Donald Trump, suggesting that's how she'd be widowed. And of course, it's only in the context of a guy having done this several days later that that makes any sense. Of course, the joke is, this was a trophy wife. He's much older. She's going to die faster and get a lot of

money. How many times has that been done? That kind of joke. So it has no relevance, but it is a weapon for them to try to use and they will demagogue this. That's what they do. They will demagogue this and demagogue this. But I honestly think that the terms have changed. I really do. I think Kimball was in danger the last time. He was in danger. I don't think he's in danger right now. I think he has the public behind him. I think he has his audience strong behind him. And I think Disney says, we're not taking this guy off. When we took him off and it was just suspended for a week, people were canceling Disney Plus and they weren't going to the theme parks and all of that. They're not going to get involved in that.

I think they have a defense to say, this is the First Amendment. We are not giving in on this. And they look good. They'll only come out of it looking good. Mark, where does this go from here? What do you envision could possibly happen? If, you know, Kimmel stays on the air, obviously you said the ratings are going to be great for him. We're headed towards the end of Colbert's run.

Is this perhaps just going to be the biggest month in, late-night television we've seen in a long time. I think it is. I mean, just, you just never know. It's like that Jack Parr thing. We want to check in with Kimmel every night and see what, how is he going to say? How is he going to react to this? And then the whole Colbert fell farewell to were, I mean, is big. I mean, I know they just announced President Obama is going to be doing something. It's going to be a pre-tape from Chicago, I believe, with the launch of his presidential museum. But, yeah, I don't remember the last time that late night was disrelevant and so much going on.

And that's definitely something that I'm glad we're talking about. I would compare it to the Conan Farewell Week. Well, there was a tremendous amount going on. Kimmel was going crazy with it and Dave was going crazy with it. But interestingly, John, I did write a piece about what the ratings seem to be portending here, which is that Colbert's audience is going to go to Kimmel. significant way. And we have seen that because in recent months and maybe the last six, since they announced he was going to be gone, when Colbert's been in repeats, Kimmel's

audience goes up. So those are Colbert voters, viewers that are going over there. And I think that's going to be what happens. And it complicates the future a little. I don't know how far Jimmy really had planned to keep going, but I think he's going to be a solid number one in late night. I think once you become number one, I mean, that is a good way to go out. I know at the same time, it's like so many people there. He's friends with and family members and stuff and feels a responsibility to keep going. But to be number one would be such a- Mark, I would say the other thing is true too.

When you get to number one, you want to take the run. You want to enjoy it. You do, unless you're Dave Letterman and give up after two years on CBS. Right, but Letterman didn't have opposition in the way that Kimmel is going to have with Trump for the next two plus years, right? He has an incentive to want to stay around through the rest of this administration. He does. That would be an incentive for him, I think. I can't see him staying that long given what he's said to me in the past.

But like I said, if he gets to be number one, all of a sudden the economics change too. You know, and I think possibly ABC might say, let's sign a long-term deal now. It does remind me of a little bit of Johnny Carson. In 1980, he's gone. And 85, 25 years, I'm gone. And it just kept going and going. There's a little bit of that with him. But I mean, yeah, I mean, to be number one, he is going to be inevitably number one. And that is saying something. And that is excitement. Yeah. I would say, you know, he only signed a one-year deal, which I guess is up next May. I think he'll go another one. I think that's really interesting.

In the short term, in the short term, what's going to be very interesting is his appearance at the affiliate meeting in New York. Jimmy always appeared before the affiliates, always does a stand-up set, and I'm going to go talk to him then, so I'm kind of looking forward to that. So I have a couple questions, Bill.

One is, in the short term, for things that may happen in the next few years, days of the next week or so, what are the things that if you're, you know, not so tuned in to this story and not so understanding of how it works with the parent companies and what car is trying to do, what would the average late-night viewer be looking for to see if there's any movement anywhere with the kennel story? I want to see if Jimmy ups the ante, you know, he has already said basically, okay, you know, I'm sorry people misunderstood the joke, whatever, and then basically did a regular show with regular jokes about Trump. Now we have this attack on ABC. Now,

ABC may say to him, you know, go do your show, but don't go overboard here. We think we have the high ground, but I think he needs to give like safe harbor to ABC to be, you know, they have the principle on their side. Don't make another, don't do offensive joke about Melania. Don't, you know what I mean? I would be a little careful about it. But I think he, Jimmy's pugnacious, you know, and I think he's liable to stand up there and want to take a swing. I also know that he is feeling a lot of stress from this. This is not a breeze, you know. That guy, I mean, I can't even imagine he has kids walking in public.

Just this life is much more complicated with this going on. Well, the other major thing that I'm thinking about, and maybe this is like a potential for an interesting article, but I do wonder if Kimmel gets co-opted by the left as a result of all of this, where that Colbert not being around anymore and he ends up being the voice of the resistance, well, you know, Democrat politicians who are, you know, we have the midterms coming up later this year, and then obviously we'll have the election cycle in a couple of years. I wonder if they all try and go on his show and Kimmel would be inclined to book them because of the ratings. And in that case, it becomes, you know, with less options to go watch in the evening, it becomes

really simple for a lot of people, whereas that if you are generally left leaning, you would be likely to watch Kimmel because you feel like you're being represented by him. And I wonder if that's something that he's ever really wanted. It's not to say that he's not on that side, but to say that, like, he was like a sports guy, a DJ. He somehow became this, put in this position. I can tell you how it happened. But I think it's your really a little bit behind the curve.

He's already had a lot of those politicians on. He's already started doing that. And it's very interesting that the night. The major difference, though, is that Colbert was also there. So he, that they were both doing it. Now he's going to just be the guy. That's correct. That is correct.

But I think, look, what changed, Jimmy was not political at all at first. He really was not. And he didn't, I don't, he didn't. grew up with a very strong political bent. Letterman was his guy. Letterman was on the NBC. It was, you know, that's what the sensibility was with the show. And he was a sports guy.

You're right and all that. That's the thing. He did that on the radio. But, you know, the thing with his kid is what changed everything. That changed everything for him. His son was born with this very severe heart birth defect. And it was right at the time when the, you know, health care bill was up. well, the Europeans were trying to kill it.

Trump was trying to kill it. And he was in the middle of this with his kid. And he was so scary and severe. And he realized that, you know, if this wasn't my kid, I have money. This isn't my kid. What would a person do? And it's right in the middle of that being the argument. Like, yeah, rich people will be able to cover this, but if people don't have health care,

those kids are going to die. And he did that show where he came out and talked about that. and it was hugely emotional and hugely supported, except, you know, the right was against him now all of a sudden. And he was like, because this is my kid. What are you talking about? And I think it really, really hit home for him. And I don't think it's too much to say that that show and his particular performance about that killed the effort, killed the Republican effort. They didn't get John McCain and they didn't get it. And I think that has made the less. the right very pissed off at him since then and made the left say, yeah, this guy's kind of heroic. And when he stands up to Trump this way, when other people are caving, he, David Letterman said,

you are the voice of the resistance. He called him that. He called him that. So, and I don't think he wants to be that in his gut. I really don't. I don't think that's what he saw himself doing, but he believes in it now. He believes Trump is a dangerous guy and, you know, a bad guy, sort of. And he doesn't, He doesn't back down from that. And then I think the other interesting aspect to all this is, you know, you just think back to him starting his show in 2003 was not taken very seriously, could not get big name guests compared to the other late night hosts that were out there. And just, you know, what a difference 20 years, 22 years, 23 years makes. It's incredible to see the position that he's in now having outlasted all of the others that were with him at the time. and his position in late night compared to the existing late night shows.

It's a little bit like how Letterman started on CBS and did the NBC show and it was one thing. And by the last bunches of years on CBS was not doing the innovative bit, became more of an elder statesman, more political and just this other Dave. And that's kind of what Jimmy's become, I think. Bill, do you agree with that assessment? Well, yes. But I mean, I think Jimmy still does. I mean, the bit he did last night with the guy, people in the street. It's still comedy.

He's still comedy first, but. Comedy for him. Kind of silly the way he would do that kind of thing. But interestingly, when I was writing a piece about Kimmel gaining or whatever, we put up this chart and it, you know, starts in 2003 when Kimmel starts. And he only had about, looks like about 18, 1.8 million viewers, I guess. And it went down. By 2005, he was down.

about 1.5. And then he just made a very slow, slow, slow, slow, slow, slow, slow slide up. He never got to 2 to 2 million until you get to 2013 when he suddenly jumps to 3 to 3 million. And interestingly, he's the one guy who has not dived since then much. You know, he's got up to a higher level and he stayed at that level. And he's been gaining because, Jimmy Fallon is falling, and he's gained a little from that. And now Colbert's going to be gone. I think he's going to have a pretty damn good number. It'll be interesting.

I mean, you have the Daily Show as well. So those are your two options, but... But they're not on at the same time, so it's not really a conflict for him. It was very interesting, by the way, the night after the shooting at the dinner, which was actually just a salad, was I watched Stuart and Stuart was very funny and he was very, very funny

and he used some clips and then Kimmel used the exact same ones he did many, many of the same jokes it was very interesting. Obviously they don't mean to do that but you know the clips invited that like when Robert Kennedy is being whisked off the stage and Cheryl

lines is left behind both guys had to make jokes about that. I'm glad Robert Smygel was there and we got triumph on the Daily Show. Yes. And Waltzzer's agent, continuing to eat while all this is going on. Yeah, I mean, look, look, thank God no one got hurt.

You know, that's... Yes, then you can make comedy. If someone got hurt, they couldn't do any of that. Yeah. Yeah, I certainly think, you know, Kimmel's going to be the number one story this week. And then into next season as well, when we're talking about him just being out there

and the importance of his voice and where ABC fits in the landscape of politics in the United States. I think it's all really interesting. Let's turn to CBS, though. Let's talk about their decision to hand the time slots to Byron Allen. So last time we were together, we were speculating about what they might do. It seemed inevitable at that point. So, Bill, you've been writing about the ultimate decision that they made.

What about the affiliates? How long will this last? There's a lot of questions we still have when it comes to Byron Allen's involvement in CBS, but at least for now, this is the choice they made. it is to me a mystery that the affiliates haven't said anything much about this because CBS sold their time but it's on their stations so they have to run this show instead of what they were promised which was a you know professional high class late night show they'd had for 30 years and and they do pay CBS for their program so that that license fee that's a

transmission fee, I guess they call it, retransmission fee, whatever it is, they should be able to get a discount of some kind for not having Colbert anymore and having essentially paid programming on there. So I'm not sure that there isn't going to be some element of protest. Now, they didn't do a traditional upfront where the affiliates would have been, you know, maybe vocal about this, but I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't some complaining about it. Because, look, I'm not here to criticize Byron Allen. He does what he does. He has an idea to, you know, reach a certain amount of people in sell advertising. That's his goal. And he's had a show for, you know, 20 plus years, the same format that he can rerun forever because it's not topical. And that's what he's doing

with half of the show. And he does half of the show that's kind of original. But it's not a show that is going to get a lot of press. It's not going to get a lot of buzz. There's no guests. There's no guests things that comes on to drive it. It's a completely different animal from what they've had before. And I, and although ABC, I mean, CBS did say, you know, it's a one-year deal and we're still looking at different formats. The people I talk to are like, oh, that's just lip service. They'll never sell, they'll never go away from this because they're going to take,

they're getting a profit. And if they go to some other creator show, they'll probably take a loss. So somebody in the Bean County Department will say, we can't do that. you know, we'll lose money. I still think if I'm running CBS, it's kind of embarrassing to not have your own show there and to have sold it out for, you know, not exactly a whole lot of money. Something, I don't know what anyone else has heard, but it's between $5 and $10 million or something, which is not very much money. So I'm curious about where it goes long term with CBS. And I think if you were a smart person and you had an idea, you might be able to get to them and

say, here's, here's what I do, and it's not expensive. You could look, you know, there are people doing, let's just imagine that Conan O'Brien's decided to repurpose his podcast on CBS. That would be a very interesting thing to do. I mean, it would probably play pretty well. There are probably things you can do that, that doesn't cost hardly anything, right? So there are probably things that somebody could maybe come up with and maybe it would intrigue them enough to do it. And maybe the affiliates would say, we want you to do that. That's something we definitely touched on last month a little bit about the potential of them licensing that slot over to an existing show. And just yesterday, I believe on Late Nighter,

we wrote about another YouTube show that's going to be a late-night show hosted by Ben Glebe. And it feels like that's where the industry is headed. So it wouldn't be surprising if they ended up looking at some of those shows over the next year to see the success. Mark, what do you think of what CBS ended up ultimately doing with this time slot? I think Byron Allen is as a mogul is a business genius. If you look at his career and what he's been able to accomplish, you know, they've been hundreds and hundreds of these shows ready to go for Comics Unleashed. They are going to be doing the game show at 1230 as well, which I think is interesting.

I do not know what Comics Unleashed at 1230 when it was. I think they were, they had it on for a while after court and what ratings it was getting on CBS. I'd be interested to know. But yeah, we'll see. I mean, it's, it's, it's, again, it's hard to say until it's there at 1130 and what people are going to watch. I mean, I don't, I don't really know. I mean, I think it is really good that he is showcasing a lot of really funny comedians and I hope it does help them. And I know Byron Allen really has a lot of respect for for Carson, Johnny Carson, and for late night. And just for this was his dream to get, you know, kind of do late night.

It's just kind of a different way to go about it. And we shall see. Yeah, I'm curious if anyone's going to pay attention to this. I mean, I'm sure that there's people who are going to, like, be watching primetime CBS and then leave the TV on. But I don't know who's seeking out this. I mean, that YouTube show, by the way, with being produced by Stuart Bailey, a daily show guy.

former Daily Show guy once a week and I can't imagine them ever doing a nightly show with a band again like that like a big That's what I was impressed by they have a band They do and I don't know I mean I don't know if they're gonna have a studio audience I'm guessing if there's a band there's an audience But yeah I don't know where they're gonna film it

Wherever's the cheapest I guess but that's an investment You know I mean it's YouTube they have a lot they have big bucks Well YouTube has a massive audience too Yeah They're the next biggest audience of Netflix, right? I mean, so they can reach a lot of people. Is it their intention to just try this out and then put it on a network? I don't know.

Or they think, no, this is ours. This is what we're going to do. I'm not sure what their plan is. I definitely think it's something to keep it on it. I like them doing it. I like them saying, okay, we have an unbelievable young audience that watches YouTube, right? and we think this is a good format. It's a very old television format, but we're going to do it.

I also think there's something to be said about people who watch the existing late-night shows on YouTube by going to clips of Kimmel and Fallon, et cetera, and then the algorithm is going to know that you like late-night content and then is going to force-feed you this other show with Julian Shapiro Barnum or the Benghlebe show, the two that are being there. you're going to see these shows because the Google and YouTube know you love late night TV. And it's just another way to then get advertisers in. So I just think that this is, this is to me is the simplest, most successful model of late night in the future.

And I think they will find a way to bring it to linear. So we'll keep watching as they make some more decisions in the next few years. Let's talk about Colbert, who this will be the last time we get to talk about his. show before it finishes up on one of these monthly roundtables where he has 12 episodes left, three weeks to go starting next week. And Mark, you mentioned Obama's going to be on there. I'm sure we're going to see lots of old friends come back and visit him. What are you most looking forward to seeing from Colbert as the show wraps up? I'm looking to say, I'm guessing Dave Letterman's locked in.

I mean, that is what I'm looking forward to is Dave being there. You know, he started the franchise August 30th, 1993. I was in the second row. it's a 30-plus year old franchise and it's going away, which is really, really sad. CBS owns the Sullivan Theater. I don't know what they're going to do, but I'm looking forward to Dave. That's my number one thing. And I know that Colbert, two dream guests, are Beyonce and the Pope. And the Pope is, you know, they're both Chicago people.

That's right. I think that there's a chance. I mean, Valent, there was a chance that Valent at one point was going to have the Pope. It was like a real tangible thing. So this book or the previous one? Oh, I think it was the previous one. So we'll see. I mean, if it happens, I mean, it would be really big, obviously, and unheard of for the late

night genre. But I think they're just going to go all out. I'm sure his wife Evie is going to be on. The audience loves her. But, yeah, 10, I mean, 11 years. I mean, hopefully they're going to maybe show some old clips. I'm guessing they're not going to probably do much from the first year. It was interesting because people forget the.

first year. You had Elon Musk, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, it was a completely different show. But yeah, just the fact that they did 11 years on the network TV is this is a huge deal for them. I have a Pope, I have a Pope question. Didn't Conan and Colbert go and see the Pope? Yes. Right? They did. They did. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Chris Rock, I think it was there. And I forget who else was there. Yeah. Yeah. So they have, they have been to the Vatican. They have, well, he wanted the, the Pope was doing comedians. That was his point. He had an audience for comedians. So I don't think it's far-fetched.

I mean, I think it has a possibility. I also think I'm virtually certain that they'll have Strike Force Five on. Oh, all of them? You think together? Yeah, I think that would be amazing if they do. I still really did think that

Lauren would offer Colbert to host Saturday Night Live, but maybe in the fall or maybe never. I mean, it's tough when his guy is not as, you know, last in the ratings Fallon right now. That's the problem right there. But, yeah, I thought that there was going to be

a chance. Well, Colbert would be brilliant at that, let's face it. Yeah, I mean, he's a sketch performer. I mean, yeah, that's, yeah. He's brilliant at that. I think there'll be, I hope there'll be some people we haven't thought of that maybe are really quite unusual. I don't

know, but, you know, I think that once we talked about, with the possible exception of the Pope are like, I mean, I could see him going on a weekend to Rome and taping something with the Pope. I don't think the Pope's going to walk out on stage, you know, with the, what's the new name of the band, the Great Joy Machine? You know, Louis Cato, yeah. You know, playing in Hosanas or something. I don't think that'll happen, but. I mean, you never know, because the Pope, you know, obviously had that whole thing

where he was talking about the war in Iran, and then the Trump administration said that the Pope should get involved in politics, which I think brings the Pope more into the daily political discussion, and that's right up Colbert's alley. So he sort of feels like he, you know, besides the fact that he is the Pope, he is also the perfect guest for Colbert. He is. He speaks good English. Yeah, he definitely. So I'm very curious to see what will happen there. I do think the Strike Force Five thing is a fascinating moment potentially. Have we ever seen that many current late night hosts on a show together before? I mean, I know that they showed up when Colbert's cancellation was announced.

We had a lot of the building in the audience. But for a sit-down interview, have we ever had the full crossover? I'm not saying they'll do a sit-down interview. I don't know what they'll do. How will they all have the time to coordinate like that? I mean, I will say, though, if it does. If it were to happen, it would happen when Kimball is there in New York. Yes.

And is that on the schedule coming up? Kimball's going to be doing the upfronts. I think it's like May 12th or something. Okay. I forget the exact date. But he's going to be doing the upfront. So he's there. He will certainly, if not the other guys, he will certainly visit Colbert.

Bill, I do have to ask you real quick. Do you think if Stephen would have signed the five-year deal, the show would still be going and it wouldn't be canceled? Because you revealed right that he turned down a five-year deal for just, it was like three or two or something? Yeah. But how long ago was that? I was in, they said that he signed it in 20, 23, a three-year deal when he was offered a five-year deal. Okay. Yeah, that's an interesting question, because that gave them an easy way to say, we're not renewing.

you. You know what I mean? Instead of saying, yeah, you got a contract, but we're getting rid of you. And then they would have had to pay him. If he wasn't profitable, why would they want him for five years? It makes no sense. Well, that's a good question. Was it not profitable in 2023? I mean, back then, I think they were, look, that was, we know what that was before. That was before the takeover by a pro-Trump company. So that's a factor. I also find it a little odd that he didn't sign the five-year deal just because that would have extended him until May 2008, which would be right a few months prior to the election.

And that's when people are most interested in late nights. So I feel like you get all the leverage in that moment when you, like your deal is up to say, like, well, you know, you want me talking about the election. you got to keep. I just find that interesting. Well, there is another element, and that is that the manager of both Kimmel and Colbert be the same human being. And he has before very deliberately linked up the terms of the contracts of his hosts to give him leverage in case one of them.

So that's a possibility that that's why they didn't want to do it. That's interesting. I never would have thought that. Yeah. I can't believe Dixon. I mean, everybody, Stuart, Colbert, Kimmel. Yeah. And many others that we don't even think about it. Yeah.

Yeah. Before we wrap up a conversation on Colbert, obviously we'll talk again at the end of May when we'll know what that series finale looks like for him. Is there anything that you could imagine that would happen on the final show that would make people be like, wow, this was the moment for Colbert to go out on? the Pope other than the Pope? Pope would be big. Trump would be big. Trump would be big. Trump would be very big. There's very few people I can think of, yeah, like, very few people that would maybe, yeah.

There really isn't a celebrity or anybody like that that would be that. It's so interesting. There's not like an obvious thing that he can do because there's not a specific celebrity. there's not a notable thing. He's already doing Obama. Obama's really the biggest political name. I just feel bad for those studio audience members that are excited. They think they're going to see him in the head seldom in theater and they're going to be watching them on a monitor. But it's still, I mean, it's still a huge get. And it's a get for the show. Barack Obama. Yeah. I'm interested in what he actually does for the last show. I mean, I mean, like, what does he actually do? Is he going to be remissing? I don't know. Clips. I don't know. Clips. I don't know. I think he's going to play himself and his character from the airport. That would be great. Bill, I hope you can finally interview Colbert.

I just, I'll never understand why he didn't want to have any signature bit. Like, everyone else, it's the one thing that I don't really is. It really is. I think it hurt him. I think he's so good at it. No, I know. Brilliant. It's so good at it.

And they didn't really. really use the New York backdrop. I mean, they could have been filming this in Nebraska. I mean, you're in New York City. No, he didn't use it. Yeah. Hardly ever used it. Yeah. But I mean, number one for most of his run, that's huge. Let's talk about the Lorne documentary. So I had the privilege of getting to interview Morgan Neville last month, and it was really fun to get to talk to him about everything that went into producing this documentary. So I'd love to know what you both think of what you saw from Lorne. I did go to the pale Center. I was invited and it was really nice to do a screening with Morgan Neville. They actually just showed

clips. And I did ask him if there was anybody that declined to be in the documentary. And the one person he said was Dan Aykroyd, which I found very interesting. Because Akroyd wouldn't do the 50th either. But Akroyd said he would write a letter. He offered to write a letter. And then what are we going to do with a letter for a doc? So they said no. But I, you know, I think that in terms of if you're going to get somebody to do a documentary. Neville does great work, but he's the safest possible choice for Lorne. You know, it's just, it's, it's, it, I really, really did like a lot of it, what I, what I saw. It just, it, I wanted just to learn more, but I just think as Morgan Evel said, he's, Lauren is just not a great interview always. He does, he gives non-answer's sometimes. Neville told

this story, and I don't know if he told you, which I thought was really funny. It was very early on in the filming when he was, Lauren would just try to like duck out whenever they were filming and that he's like, I want you to meet our costume person, designer Tom. And then, oh, hi, Tom. And then Lauren was gone. It was like basically he did that as a distraction so he could get out of there. But I'm glad that somebody did it.

I mean, who's going to get access to Maine, to his blueberry farm? I mean, there are some definitely things where you're just like, man, I can't believe. And Neville said to me, I mean, that was huge. They were trying for months to get him to agree to do that. And I'm glad that they did. But I thought that I'm glad that they did the doc. I thought it was delightful. I really enjoyed it.

I thought it was just, I mean, a lot of it was just interesting. A lot of the stuff with Lauren I'd heard before. But there was, you know, one moment that I really had not ever seen before. And I really enjoyed seeing was they. showed it you know I forget what show was that they were

they did a lot of different parts of shows and had a number of hosts were on the scene but I think it would show was it wasn't it didn't do well the dress didn't do well it was toward the end right

and he was upset he didn't like it he didn't like what was happening and and uh you know all the guys were saying then he'd throw ice and they should show him throwing ice and stuff

but then he did this like locker room pep talk uh where he stood in the stage and he basically said, you got to go out there and do it. You got to get out there and do that. And I'd never seen him do that before.

And I thought that was really, really cool. And the other thing that I really reacted to was the animated portion where Smigel. The Smigel is playing Lorne. And Jim Downey is playing Erwin Siegelstein. Okay? And Irwin Singelstein. comes in and says to him, and this is when, and Lauren is represented as a very young Lauren because he is going to quit. He's now, he's had it. He's basically going down the

gauntlet to NBC saying, you know, if you keep doing this with the show, I'm going to walk up to show or anything. And basically, Sengelstein says, you know, you have to understand that you'll leave and the show will get worse. And it'll be, we'll have it for a while. The show will get worse because you're not there trying to make it good. And then it'll eventually be bad. And when it's bad, we'll take it off. And then it'll be over and it'll be gone. But we won't be gone because we're the network and we're eternal. And that is, that was literally word for word. I had to get my book out. Word for word, Lauren told me that story. Okay. Word for word. He told me that story.

And I asked Robert, but he didn't tell me. I don't know if he really was aware of that. But I thought, did they just read this thing for my book? Because it was exactly what he told me about Irwin. Although it went on a little bit because he said something like, maybe it wasn't there, but he said something like, you know, the thing is you care. The reason that Europe said is that you care. You care.

And we don't have to, we don't care. we don't care whether you put in all the stuff and we don't care we're not going to pay any extra whether you can but you care because you're trying to make it good and we don't care if it's good we don't care if it's good and it was is that I can't remember if that was in there too but it was but Lorne was telling me that story

in the context of Conan quitting NBC because he didn't think that was smart he didn't think he said you never take yourself off the air you don't you don't take yourself off the air And he said, I'm in, I was in there thinking that, oh, you know, I'm so important. They're going to cave to me because I'm trying to make it good. And basically I said, no, we don't care. Screw you.

You can leave. And that whole scene was so interesting to me because I thought, yeah. It's in your book. It's in the book. And it's exactly what Lauren was thinking at the time that, you know, he understood all of Conan's motivations, but don't take yourself off the air. If the network's going to leave you on, stay there. Keep going. And it's an interesting theory in light of later things.

Because, I mean, Kona went to TBS. Not the same as being on NBC, even at 1230. I thought that was super fascinating. I think also him talking about his road trip with Paul Simon and where he really figured out what he wanted the show to be and what makes him tick and makes him love about New York. I think there were certain things that were really good. But for me, the most crucial part, the most exciting part of getting to see anything to do with Saturday Night

is that moment right between dress and air when they're deciding what to cut or not. And it's the moment that we never get to see because they never want to offend anybody and see what the actual conversations in the room are like. And the fact that we got a little bit of that in this documentary, I think made the whole thing worth it. So, yeah, it was just really cool. I sat in on one of those. I did sit in on one of those, one of those times. Do you remember which show it was? Oh, absolutely. It was the show where it was the first debate between Obama and Mitt and Romney.

That was going to be the cold open, and they brought Downey back to write it. And if you remember the debate, Obama was terrible. It was off his game. He just was not good. But nothing happened. Like there was nobody doing anything. There was no big moment. There was no funny words. of it. So it was really, really difficult. And Downey's sketch, which I watched at dress, just absolutely fell flat. And, you know, so Long walks in the room, he says, that is not going on the air. What we just saw is not going on the air. We have whatever, half an hour to either write that or we're doing something. I forget what the other thing was going to do for a quote. But he said, I, you know, I know everybody in America is expecting us to do a debate sketch because we always do it. But we can't. But we can't. We can't use that. We can't use it. And they, I mean, throughout what I did, they just, boom, and they put together what was acceptable, maybe, but still didn't have a great thing. But it was fascinating to me how quickly they did that. And they pulled this together and they put it on the air. And I don't think anybody thought it was awful. They just didn't think it was one of the great ones. And it was done in like a half an hour. I'm really glad you were able to do that. I'm glad that they showed Lauren at Orso's with Steve Martin. and just a little bit behind the scenes. I was hired for the New York Times at Orsworth. Oh, wow.

All right. That episode you're talking about must have been October 2012, Daniel Craig and Muse, I would think. Yeah, definitely. But fascinating. All right. Well, let's talk about the final month of Saturday Night that's coming up. So we just wrapped up the month of April that featured Jack Black joining the Five Timers Club,

Coleman Domingo hosting for the first time. We had a good few episodes of Estout UK. And then coming up for this final month, people are pretty excited about this lineup. We got Olivia Rodrigo doing double duty, so a huge up-and-coming star. If you could still call her up-and-coming, she's been around for a few years now, but still a major star. Matt Damon returning to the show to host for the third time the following week with music from Noah Khan. And then the lineup of all lineups for the season finale, Will Ferrell and Paul McCartney.

I mean, this could be an incredible month for Saturday Night, Bill. What are you most looking forward to? Well, I mean, I'm old enough to look forward, mostly to McCartney, but he doesn't sing the way he used to. So it'll be a bit of a challenge for him, I think, although some people just saw him in concert and thought he was great. But to me, Olivia Rodriguez is intriguing because I don't know what she can do. She's been on the show, I think, before, right? Yeah, she's been a singer. Yeah, she's been a musical guest twice.

Yeah, she's been a musical guest. But we haven't seen what she can do. So that's a leap in the dark, right? And if she can do something good, I mean, it really vaults her. You know, it really elevate her, which I think is what we've seen with many, many young performers. And maybe she'll just be, you know, fantastic at it. The double duty thing is so impressive. Harry Styles can do it.

Sabrina Carpenter was really good. Timberlake has always been great at it. Yeah, it's when they can, people can do that. It's always in awe when they can do that well. I've had a huge question about why are we getting this Will Ferrell Paul McCartney lineup now. I know that the easiest answer is like, all right, well, what about Lauren? I don't think Lauren's going anywhere. But my thing has always been, we don't always get what we want as SNL fans.

And this feels just a little bit too perfect. So pardon me being conspiratorial, but I just feel like there's something like, how did this come together? It's the perfect lineup. John, you're forgetting. Paul has a new album. It's that simple? Paul has a new album. Paul is Lawrence best friend or after Paul Simon, right?

I mean, it's just like, oh, you got a new album, we'll put you on, you know, I think that's an element of it for sure. Like, you know, and Farrell coming back is just, I mean, a great final post to me. They try to get a big, a big farewell show every year. So I mean, I would not put that much. I thought it was very interesting in a documentary where Steve Martin says something like, so. You're not retiring. And Lauren and someone says, no.

I don't think he is, but I do think there is an element of, well, if Lauren calls me and asks me to do the show, how many more times is he going to call me to do the show? So maybe this is the last time I get to host the show while Lauren is still running it if you're a Will Ferrell. So I think that there's probably more yeses than knows that will be happening from now on until Lauren does leave the show. Yeah, that's a good point. I think you're right about that. And McCartney, this probably is the last album. So, I mean, you know, that might be his last chance for that too.

Sure. And we could get a massive moment on the finale if Ringo Starr does make an appearance to perform with Paul McCartney, which apparently they, did they do have a song together on this album so they do yes they do yeah that could be the big one but yeah this has been a lot of fun you guys getting to talk to you about this month a lot of craziness some ups and downs but i think we're going to have plenty to discuss when we return together in may so mark thanks for joining us here tell everybody what's happening on inside late night we have our one of our favorite guest robert smigel coming back uh we're going to do a mad tv episode as well we have one today that just came out but we have another

when we have some really fun, exciting guests coming out. But the smigel thing, I always am like a little kid. So I apologize for me getting giddy, but he's my favorite S&L writer of all time. He's the best. And Bill Carter always appreciated getting to hear your thoughts on everything. Please tell the listeners if you have something coming up that you're excited to write about or what's going on with you. Well, as I said, I'm going to see Kimmel at the up front.

and I'm still pursuing Colbert. I'm going to do an event at the Daily Center, the day before Colbert's finale, about basically the history of finalies in late night, which would be kind of fun. Dave Letterman had a really strong finale, I thought, on CBS. He did. Yeah, it's definitely an art.

I mean, it's a shame Johnny didn't have his penultimate show. Yeah, you know, but because we're going to show clips of the finalies and his finale was just a clip show. Yeah. You know, him sitting on his stool. But yeah, and I think Conan's was great from the late night show particularly. So there'll be plenty to talk about. All right. Well, we'll see how it stacks up and we'll talk about it when we get back together in May.

So if you're enjoying everything you have heard today, definitely subscribe to the late-nighter podcast feed where you can hear all of our roundtables. check out all of Mark's interviews on Inside Late Nighter. We also invite you to head over to Late Nighter.com for the latest news in late night television and read articles from all of our great late night writers. So on behalf of Mark Malkoff and Bill Carter, my name is John Schneider from Late Nighter and we will see you next time, everybody. Have a good one.