Stephen Colbert could have been forgiven for crowing. Less than two months ago, The Late Show host learned his much-loved talk show had been cancelled by CBS in controversial circumstances. While the network claimed it was purely a financial decision, many believe the show was sacrificed to curry favor with President Trump. Tonight, Colbert won the Emmy for Outstanding Talk Show. As his team celebrated wildly behind him and in the audience, Colbert raised the prize aloft and took the gracious route: He began by thanking CBS.
His intention for the show, he explained, had been to create a late-night comedy show 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 continued. “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.”
