Former Late Night host David Letterman joined Thursday’s broadcast of The Late Show in a spiteful sendoff for Stephen Colbert as the two took to the roof of the Ed Sullivan Theater to throw CBS property to the ground.
Letterman occasionally threw items off the top of the building during his run of the Late Show between 1993 and 2015. But CBS prohibited Stephen Colbert from emulating Letterman’s roof-tossing bit when he took the show over starting in 2015. Despite the prohibition, though, Colbert brought Letterman onto the show Thursday to revive his bit, this time throwing items off the roof to destroy a CBS logo sign sitting on the street.
CBS has canceled its flagship late-night program, and there will be no successor for Colbert, whose last show is set for May 21 due to his unprofitable viewership. So, to send Colbert off into retirement, the two TV hosts mounted the stairs to the roof of the theater where the show has been recorded since 1993 to give their middle fingers to the network.
The pair threw lounge chairs off the roof first before resorting to a desk chair and then to a handful of watermelons, all aimed at crushing a mockup of the CBS logo sitting below.
Once they were done tossing items from the roof, Colbert thanked Letterman for appearing on the show, and said, “Thanks so much for creating The Late Show 33 years ago. It’s been a pleasure having you back to destroy some stuff.”
“The pleasure is all mine. I enjoy destroying stuff. It’s great, great fun. Thank you for everything you’ve done for our country,” Letterman responded.
Before the pair took to the rooftop, they surveyed some of the items they intended to destroy down in the studio.
Letterman said that the bit made him “a little teary” as he prepared to give Colbert a big sendoff. Letterman added, “I have every right to be pissed off, so I’ll be pissed off here a little bit.”
“Because this theater, you folks wouldn’t be in this theater if it weren’t for me, and Stephen wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for me,” he continued. “And we rebuilt this theater, and then Stephen came in, and look at this? It’s like the Bellagio. But, listen, as we all understand, you can take a man’s show, you can’t take a man’s voice, so that’s the good news from me.”
As the pair took a look at the lounge chairs they intended to toss from the roof, Letterman asked, “Who owns it?” And Colbert replied, “This all belongs to the Paramount CBS Corporation.”
“Yeah, this is nice. It’d be a shame if something happened to this,” Letterman quipped.
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