Stephen Colbert Gets Huge Emmys Standing Ovation, Crowd Chants ‘Stephen!’ After CBS Cancels ‘Late Show’

Stephen Colbert took the stage at the Emmy Awards Sunday night as a presenter, earning huge applause after his “The Late Show” was shockingly canceled by CBS earlier this year.

The crowd rose to its feet as soon as Colbert hit the stage, chanting “Stephen! Stephen! Stephen!” before Colbert presented the award for lead actor in a comedy series. “While I have your attention, is anyone hiring?” the late-night host joked before taking out a resume complete with a vintage headshot. He promptly handed off the resume to Harrison Ford in hopes he could pass it along to Steven Spielberg.

Later in the telecast, when “The Late Show” won the Emmy for outstanding talk series, Colbert returned to the stage for an electrifying victory speech. First, Colbert thanked CBS for “giving us the privilege to be part of the late-night tradition, which I hope continues long after we are no longer doing this show.” Colbert will host his last episode of “The Late Show” in May 2026.

“Ten years ago in September of 2015, Spike Jonze stopped by my office and said, ‘What do you want this show to be about?’ I said, ‘I don’t know how you could do it, but I’d like to do a late-night comedy show about love,’” Colbert said. “I don’t know if I ever figured that out, but at a certain point, and you can guess what that point was, I realized that in some ways we were doing a late-night comedy show about loss. And that’s related to love because sometimes the only truly know how much you love something when you get a sense that you might be losing it.”

“Ten years later, in September of 2025, my friends, I have never loved my country more desperately. God bless America,” Colbert said. Then, in a reference to Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy,” he added: “Stay strong, be brave, and if the elevator tries to bring you down, go crazy and punch a higher floor!”

The late-night host pumped his fist in the air, holding his first Primetime Emmy, and let out a big “Woo!”

“The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” won its first Creative Arts Emmy Award last Sunday. The award was given in the outstanding directing for a variety series category. The show won its first two Emmys two months after CBS announced its cancellation. The long-running franchise, which began in 1993 as “The Late Show With David Letterman” and was taken over by Colbert in 2015, will conclude in 2026.

The cancellation is not without controversy, as it was announced just days after CBS parent company Paramount settled a lawsuit with the Trump administration and subsequently merged with Skydance Media. Colbert and Trump have long been critics of one another, despite the president being a guest on the show in 2015. The comedian has rarely missed an opportunity to make fun of Trump, and the President responded with approval of the show’s cancellation. Though Trump denied responsibility for Colbert’s cancellation, he posted on Truth Social, “I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings.”

Colbert himself has been nominated for 44 Primetime Emmys over the course of his career, taking home 10 for his work on “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report.” He has also won two Grammys, five Peabody awards, seven Producers Guild awards and four Writers Guild awards.