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Oprah Winfrey gave an emotional “thank you” to Stephen Colbert on Tuesday when the two swapped seats during an appearance on “The Late Show” and the late-night host faced questions about her time as host.
“Well, I want to say to you, thank you very much,” Winfrey said as she sat down in Colbert’s chair. “Thank you so much for holding the space for laughter. Didn’t he hold the space for laughter in our lives and be there for us?”
Colbert’s show was canceled by CBS in 2025 and will officially end its season in mid-May.
The audience then breaks into a “Stephen” chant, as Winfrey enters.
Stephen Colbert and Oprah Winfrey are reversing roles on “The Late Show” on Tuesday, April 7, 2026. (CBS/The Late Show)
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Winfrey thanked Colbert after he left for the interview, and told the late-night host that she was proud of him.
“I had to come back to say again how proud I am of you and to say goodbye,” she said.
When Winfrey asked Colbert from his seat as an interviewer, the night host said the two should switch places. Winfrey asked Colbert if he wanted to release or release anything.
“I don’t want to give up anything yet, because I’m still holding a white knuckle for all these people I love, who I’ve worked with all these years. Including those people who are here,” he said.
Media observers believe that CBS’ “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” helped James Talarico defeat Representative Jasmine Crockett to win the Democratic Senate primary in Texas on Tuesday night. (Scott Kowalchyk ©2025 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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The two went on to praise their audience. Winfrey described the audience as “a mirror.”
“The first Oprah show that I did – it was called ‘AM Chicago’ – the first one that I did, I accepted the job, but I didn’t know that 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 watch the show. We only had 12 seats! But I needed, because the audience is part of the mirror, “he said that they are a big part of the mirror.
Colbert agreed and said that the audience made him say what he really felt.
Oprah and Elizabeth Gilbert are live on CBS Mornings with Co-Host Gayle King to announce All the Way to the River as the next Oprah Book Club selection. (Photo by Gail Schulman/CBS via Getty Images) (Gail Schulman/CBS via Getty Images)
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“I need an audience so much that if there is someone I need to talk to on a business level, let’s say, and maybe I need to say something to someone in the main office that the conversation will not go well. I will ask my assistant and another employee to come and sit at the table across from me, so that I have an audience that will hear me and hear what I will actually say on the phone. Call me, because the audience makes me do more than what I will do,” said Colbert.
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Many of Colbert’s guests praised him before the end of his show. The final episode of “The Late Show” will air on May 21, as the time slot will be filled with “Comics Unleashed” by Byron Allen.
