David Letterman threw a cake off a rooftop to help Stephen Colbert say goodbye.
Kelly has been watching Colbert milk his cancellation for eleven months and ran out of patience.
Kelly delivered the verdict nobody in Hollywood had the guts to say to his face
Colbert and Letterman Throw Late Show Furniture Off the Ed Sullivan Theater Roof in Final Week
The night before Megyn Kelly's show, Stephen Colbert and his predecessor David Letterman climbed to the roof of the Ed Sullivan Theater and hurled chairs, watermelons, and a cake reading "The Late Show 1993 to 2026" down at a CBS logo on the ground below.
Letterman capped the stunt by telling CBS – on Colbert's air – "good night and good luck, motherf—ers."
Kelly was not amused.
"Stephen Colbert's bizarre goodbye to late night is finally almost over," Kelly said. "Praise Jesus, my God."
She had been watching the farewell tour build for months – Bette Midler, John Lithgow, Drew Barrymore, one emotional goodbye interview after another – and the furniture-throwing was the breaking point.
"Like, this is absurd," she said on The Megyn Kelly Show. "Why are they pretending that this is some sort of temple? That is how this feels."
Her sharpest line: "Johnny Carson had less of a goodbye when he announced his retirement from The Tonight Show, and he actually was beloved."
CBS Late Show Canceled After Losing 40 Million Dollars a Year Under Colbert
The Late Show finale airs May 21 on CBS – and CBS is retiring the franchise entirely when the lights go out.
Colbert isn't being replaced. The whole franchise – 33 years of Late Show history – ends because the business model collapsed on his watch.
The show was losing more than $40 million a year on a production budget north of $100 million, averaging 2.42 million viewers a night.
Kelly said: "You would never go to see Stephen Colbert if you weren't sharing his anti-Trump politics. And this was – this is why the show failed."
Guest Glenn Greenwald agreed, describing the Late Show as feeling more like "a late night MSNBC show."
Colbert made his choice the moment he moved from Comedy Central to CBS. He traded comedy for punditry – nightly Trump attacks, Democrat candidates announcing presidential runs from his stage, fundraisers for Joe Biden.
An audience of committed far-left partisans showed up every night.
Everyone else turned off the TV.
Gutfeld Ratings Top Colbert as CBS Kills the Late Show Franchise Entirely
While Colbert was burning his audience down to a loyal remnant of Trump haters, Greg Gutfeld was doing something radical: making people laugh.
Gutfeld! averaged 3.29 million viewers while spending a fraction of what the Late Show costs to produce.
Kelly explained the gap: "Greg gets political, but he never forgets the number one rule is to make people laugh."
Johnny Carson hosted The Tonight Show for 30 years without publicly endorsing a presidential candidate. Jay Leno drew 5 to 7 million viewers a night because he jabbed both parties and let the audience decide.
Colbert decided he was smarter than that model.
The bill came due when Kelly compared Colbert's exit to her own firing from NBC – when critics were calling her a racist and she had every reason to fall apart publicly.
"Yes, I got a little teary the day after because it was overwhelming," Kelly said. "That was it. I didn't blubber and blubber on. I didn't ask everybody to feel so sorry for me."
Her advice for Colbert's final week: "Put your big boy pants on and exit with grace. You're humiliating yourself, truly."
He had the number one late-night show in America for nine straight seasons. He had CBS's full support until the losses became unsustainable. He had nearly a full year of airtime to say goodbye on his own terms.
And he spent it making it about himself – exactly what Kelly said.
"He's not exposing anything about CBS," she said. "He's only talking about himself."
The Late Show franchise launched in 1993. It survived Johnny Carson's shadow, survived the streaming wars, survived every shift late-night television faced for three decades.
It did not survive Stephen Colbert deciding that his job was to be an activist.
Sources:
- Alex Hammer, "Megyn Kelly blasts 'self-important' canceled CBS star Stephen Colbert over yearlong, navel-gazing goodbye to his show," Daily Mail, May 15, 2026.
- "Megyn Calls Out Stephen Colbert and David Letterman's 'Pathetic' Hissy Fit Over End of 'The Late Show,'" MegynKelly.com, May 15, 2026.
- "Megyn Kelly Slams Stephen Colbert for 'Bizarre Goodbye to Late Night': 'Put Your Big Boy Pants On,'" Globe Magazine, May 15, 2026.
- "Megyn Rips 'Failure' Stephen Colbert for Driving 'The Late Show' into the Ground Before Cancellation," MegynKelly.com, July 18, 2025.
- "Late-night comedy flounders in ratings as Colbert, Kimmel, others openly root for Democrats," Fox News, October 7, 2022.
- "'Gutfeld!' Ruled 2025 While Two Late-Night Shows Collapsed," HollywoodInToto.com, January 12, 2026.
