“The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” writing staff is taking matters into their own hands when it comes to getting an Emmy nomination this year.
The writers responsible for Colbert’s late-night series all posed around New York City in a spoof of a variety of ’80s sitcom openings in a DIY video meant to pull eyes to the show that ended its run at CBS back in May. The hope is to net an Emmy nomination for the final season.
“CBS is not doing an Emmys campaign for us, so ‘for strictly financial reasons’ the @colbertlateshow writers made our own #FYC campaign,” Felipe Torres Medina, a writer on the show, posted on Instagram.
The video itself claims: “From the writers who brought you ‘The Late Show with Stephen Colbert’ this summer comes … ‘We’d Love an Emmy.’”
An individual with knowledge of Emmy campaign details said CBS did include the “Late Show” in FYC-branded TV promos in New York and Los Angeles as well as on a number of digital billboards.
“The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” earned Emmy nominations for the Outstanding Talk Series category nearly every year it was on the air. It did not manage to pull off a win until 2025, after it was announced CBS was pulling the plug on the show.
“Ten years ago, in September of 2015, Spike Jonze stopped by my office and said, ‘Hey, what do you want this show to be about?’” Colbert said at the 2025 Emmys in his acceptance speech. “I said, ‘Spike, I don’t know how you could do it, but I would like to do a late night comedy show that was about love. 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.”
He added: “That’s related to love, because sometimes you 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. Stay strong, be brave, and if the elevator tries to bring you down, go crazy and put to the higher floor.”
The nominees for the 78th Primetime Emmys will be announced on July 8.
Did Politics Kill Stephen Colbert?