Oprah and Stephen Colbert swap seats in emotional moment as 'Late Show' cancellation looms large

Oprah Winfrey gave an emotional "thank you" to Stephen Colbert Tuesday as the pair switched seats during her appearance on "The Late Show" and the late-night host faced questions about his tenure as host.

"Well, I just want to say to you, thank you so much," Winfrey said, sitting in Colbert's chair. "Thank you so much for holding the space for laughter. Has he not held the space for laughter for us in our lives and been there for us?"

Colbert's show was canceled by CBS in 2025 and will officially end at the end of its season in mid-May.

The audience then broke out into a "Stephen" chant, as Winfrey joined in.

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Winfrey thanked Colbert after she walked out on set for the interview as well, and told the late-night host she was proud of him.

"I had to come back to say one more time how proud I am of you and to say goodbye," she said.

As Winfrey posed a question to Colbert from her chair as the interviewee, the late-night host said the two should switch spots. Winfrey asked Colbert if there was anything he wanted to let go of or release.

"I don't want to let anything go yet, because I still have a white-knuckle grip on all these people who I love, who I’ve worked with all these years. Including those people right over there," he said.

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The pair went on to praise their audiences. Winfrey described the audience as a "mirror."

"The very first Oprah show I did — it was called 'AM Chicago' — the first one I did, I had accepted the job, but I didn’t know they didn’t have an audience. And so, the next day, we went out on the street, and we asked people to come in and get coffee and to watch the show. We only had 12 chairs! But I needed, because the audience is such a big part of the connection, and they are the mirror," she said.

Colbert agreed and said that audiences make him say what he really feels.

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"I need an audience so much that if there’s somebody I need to talk to like on a corporate level, let’s say, and perhaps I need to say something to someone at the head office that the conversation is not going to go that well. I will ask my assistant and someone else who works there to come in and sit on the desk across from me, so I have an audience to hear me have the phone call so that I will say what I actually feel and actually deliver on what I want to say into the phone call, because the audience makes me do it more than I will make me do it," Colbert said.

Several of Colbert's guests have lauded him ahead of his show ending. The final episode of "The Late Show" will air on May 21, as the time slot will be filled with Byron Allen’s "Comics Unleashed."