Jon Stewart Celebrates Stephen Colbert as ‘Late Show’ Ends: ‘Don’t Confuse Cancellation With Failure

The Daily Show host also brought out surprise musical guest Andra Day to perform her 2015 hit "Rise Up" Jon Stewart stopped by The Late Show to pay tribute to his friend and former colleague Stephen Colbert , offering up a few gifts to honor the late-night show’s unfortunate ending. During the lengthy interview, Colbert and Stewart reminisced about their days together on The Daily Show , where Colbert was a correspondent for eight years. Colbert shared a photo of the pair together behind The Dai

“This is no disrespect to me, but one of us has not aged as well as the other,” Stewart quipped. “This looks like a double-blind study where they gave one of these people is getting age-defying peptides and the other one is getting a placebo. I have gotten the placebo.” Stewart also offered his thoughts on CBS deciding to cancel The Late Show , which comes to an end on Thursday night. “I just think it’s so smart what CBS is doing,” he said sarcastically. “I just think it’s such a good move to take this show off the air and then also ruin your evening news and then reduce 60 Minutes to, like, six good ones.” He added that Colbert has “maintained such grace” throughout the process of the show being cancelled. “I’m having fun with my friends,” Colbert explained. “That’s how.” He added that he learned how to be a good host under a lot from pressure from Stewart himself. Stewart shared some advice he got from David Letterman at the end of his short-lived late-night show, The Jon Stewart Show , which ran on MTV from 1993 to 1995. “He said, ‘Don’t confuse cancellation with failure,'” Stewart said. But then he said, ‘But in this case it is also a failure.'” The pair traded stories about being fired in the past, including when Stewart was working as a stock boy at Woolworths and lost his job, and took a few more digs at CBS and Paramount . Colbert noted that after this week The Daily Show will be the only late-night show left in Paramount’s networks. “Here’s the saving grace that I think that I have,” Stewart replied.

Key points

• “This is no disrespect to me, but one of us has not aged as well as the other,” Stewart quipped.
• “This looks like a double-blind study where they gave one of these people is getting age-defying peptides and the other one is getting a placebo.
• I have gotten the placebo.” Stewart also offered his thoughts on CBS deciding to cancel The Late Show , which comes to an end on Thursday night.
• “I just think it’s so smart what CBS is doing,” he said sarcastically.
• “I just think it’s such a good move to take this show off the air and then also ruin your evening news and then reduce 60 Minutes to, like, six good ones.” He added that Colbert has “maintained suc…