Stephen Colbert’s Writers Land Major New Role Just Months After The Late Show Ends

Stephen Colbert’s former writing team has already found its way back to one of television’s biggest stages. Just months after The Late Show with Stephen Colbert aired its final episode, members of its writing staff are now working on the 2026 Primetime Emmy Awards.

This year’s Emmy host, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit star Mariska Hargitay, revealed that she is collaborating with Colbert’s writers as preparations accelerate for the September ceremony. The news gives the team a prominent new assignment during an unusual year in which their former show is also competing for nine Emmy Awards.

Mariska Hargitay Confirms Colbert’s Writers Are Joining Her

Hargitay revealed the collaboration while discussing her plans for hosting television’s biggest awards ceremony.

“I’m working with an incredible team of writers—the writers from Colbert,” she told Deadline.

According to Hargitay, the group has already been meeting regularly, brainstorming material and pitching numerous ideas for the telecast.

“We’re at the beginning stages,” she explained, indicating that the creative process remains fluid as the writers determine which concepts will ultimately make it into the ceremony.

For Colbert’s team, the assignment provides an opportunity to apply years of late-night experience to a very different kind of live television event.

The Job Comes After The Late Show’s Final Episode

The timing makes the new assignment especially notable.

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert concluded its run in May 2026 after CBS announced in July 2025 that it would end the program and retire The Late Show franchise.

CBS and Paramount said the cancellation was a financial decision unrelated to the show’s content or performance. The announcement nevertheless generated considerable discussion because it came amid heightened attention surrounding Colbert’s political commentary and Paramount’s settlement of Donald Trump’s lawsuit over a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris.

Colbert had publicly criticized the settlement shortly before the cancellation announcement.

Whatever the circumstances surrounding the decision, the end of the program left its longtime staff facing an uncertain professional future.

The Writers Previously Made Their Own Emmy Campaign

Before landing their new Emmy assignment, Colbert’s writers attracted attention by taking matters into their own hands during awards season.

The team said CBS wasn’t mounting a traditional For Your Consideration campaign for them, so they created their own promotional video.

The deliberately low-budget campaign parodied an old-fashioned television sitcom and carried the title “We’d Love an Emmy.”

Its Instagram caption also jokingly borrowed the corporate language surrounding the show’s cancellation, saying the writers had created the campaign themselves “for strictly financial reasons.”

The stunt allowed the team to showcase the irreverent comedy that had characterized much of their work with Colbert.

Their efforts arrived as the show’s final season received significant recognition from Television Academy voters.

Colbert’s Final Season Earned Nine Emmy Nominations

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert enters the 2026 Emmys with nine nominations, reportedly the largest single-year total in the program’s history.

Among its biggest nominations are Outstanding Variety Series, Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series and Outstanding Directing for a Variety Series.

The show also earned recognition across several technical categories, including production design, lighting, sound mixing, picture editing, music direction, and technical direction and camerawork.

That creates an unusual situation for its former writers. They will be helping construct the Emmy telecast while their own recently concluded program is competing for some of the night’s biggest variety awards.

For a staff that spent years writing jokes about Hollywood and television, the ceremony could become a particularly memorable professional reunion.

Mariska Hargitay Is Taking on an Unexpected Challenge

The ceremony also represents unfamiliar territory for Hargitay.

The actress is best known for portraying Olivia Benson on Law & Order: SVU, a character associated with some of television’s darkest subject matter rather than comedy.

Hargitay, however, told Deadline that viewers shouldn’t assume her dramatic television persona reflects her personality away from the camera.

“If you knew me, I live in the comedy world,” she explained.

She said humor has long been one of the ways she handles the demanding schedule and difficult subject matter of SVU.

The Emmy ceremony will therefore give audiences an opportunity to see a side of Hargitay that longtime colleagues may know considerably better than viewers do.

One SVU Inspired Emmy Idea Is Already Being Discussed

Hargitay also offered a small preview of the kind of material she and Colbert’s writers have been brainstorming.

The actress revealed that famous people frequently approach her with an unusual request: they want to appear as a dead body on SVU.

“I cannot tell you how many people—famous people—ask to be a dead body on the show,” she told Deadline.

Hargitay said the phenomenon has become something of a celebrity bucket-list request, and she confirmed that it is already among the concepts being discussed with the writing team.

Exactly how that idea might translate into an Emmy comedy segment remains under wraps.

A High Profile Second Act for Colbert’s Team

The new assignment demonstrates that the end of The Late Show hasn’t ended the creative partnership among at least some of the people responsible for its comedy.

Writing an awards ceremony requires a different rhythm from producing a nightly late-night show, but the Emmy telecast offers the team a huge audience and plenty of familiar targets across television and popular culture.

There is also an undeniable full-circle quality to the situation.

Months after losing their nightly platform, Colbert’s writers will help shape the very ceremony where their former show could receive a final collection of awards.

Whether they take home Emmys themselves remains to be seen, but their next major television job has already put them right back in the middle of Hollywood’s biggest night.

Featured Image: instagram.com/colbert