John Stewart Gives Colbert Two Recliners Before Final Late Show
john stewart turned Stephen Colbert’s final guest appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert into a farewell with a prop, not a speech. He arrived on Tuesday with two recliners, then watched Colbert and Stewart hit the buttons that lifted the chairs. The show ends on May 21, and the sendoff landed as the series nears its close.
Two recliners on Tuesday
Stewart said, “You deserve something tangible, something that you have earned. You deserve a gift that befits the sacrifice and work that you have put into this show, and that can show you the life you can lead and the life that I am leading now that I’m not really in show business,” before handing over the chairs. He followed that with, “My man. You’re gonna enjoy watching Matlock in this motherfucker.”
“The thing about these chairs is as you get comfortable in them, you start to think to yourself, ‘Am I going to have to expend energy to get out of it?’” Stewart said as the bit continued. Then he and Colbert pressed the button that started lifting the recliners, and Stewart pushed it further: “Stephen, get ready for the ride of your fucking life,” he said, before adding, “Press the up button. Press the up button. Press it. Press it.”
Andra Day onstage
Andra Day then walked out and performed “Rise Up,” shifting the segment from gag gift to full tribute. Stewart set it up by saying, “Stephen, this tribute doesn’t represent the joy that you brought to me as my friend and the joy that you’ve brought to this country as one of its leading entertainers,” before adding, “No, what this moment needs is something so much more.”
Colbert and Stewart have been close friends for nearly 30 years, and that history made the exchange read less like a late-night stunt than a private inside joke played for a national audience. Stewart had also made frequent guest appearances on the show after Colbert became host in 2015, so the recliners worked as a practical callback to a relationship that has outlasted multiple chapters of late-night TV.
Colbert ends on May 21
Colbert joined The Daily Show in 1997, then took over The Late Show in 2015, and Tuesday’s appearance folded both timelines into one farewell stop. Steven Spielberg also appeared on the show that night, but Stewart’s chair bit set the tone: the final stretch of Colbert’s run is being treated less like a formal sendoff than a room full of friends trying to outdo each other before the curtain falls on Thursday.
