Colbert guest-hosts – After his final “Late Show” appearance, Stephen Colbert popped up the next day as guest host of Monroe Community Media’s public-access program “Only in Monroe,” joking about being off TV for 23 hours, poking at the station’s lack of sponsors, and turning the b
Stephen Colbert didn’t ease back into public view. He landed on a public-access set in Monroe, Michigan—hours after his last-ever “Late Show”—and walked straight into it like he couldn’t wait for the off switch to end.
The following day, Colbert appeared as the guest host of “Only in Monroe,” an hour of local programming on Monroe Community Media. Behind the desk, he was “assisted, sort of,” by Jack White, hunched over a reel-to-reel tape deck with headphones clamped over his ears.
Colbert made the moment his own from the start. “It’s been an excruciating 23 hours without being on TV,” he declared. Then he added a second jab at what the future might bring for the channel’s ownership: “So I am grateful to be here on Monroe Community Media before they are also acquired by Paramount.”.
Before the show even fully settled, Colbert turned to the practical reality of public access. He peered offscreen at the crew and asked, “We don’t have any sponsors?. We actually lost a lot of money making this show tonight?” He followed it with a comparison that landed like a punchline: “Now I know how CBS felt.”.
Colbert had previously guest-hosted “Only in Monroe” in 2015. and he leaned on that history at the outset. joking that he “hadn’t slept since then.” From there. he led the guffawing camera crew through a rapid run of jokes built around local life—local weed dispensaries. Monroe’s version of Comic Con. and even a segment centered on a feud between two hot dog businesses.
The program’s familiar faces were also in the mix. “Only in Monroe’s” usual hosts, Michelle Baumann and Kaye Lani Rae Rafko, sat alongside Colbert. Jeff Daniels—raised in Chelsea, Michigan—was one of the program’s guests for an interview. Steve Buscemi read an ad for a local pizza place. Buscemi Pizza. while adding the disclaimer. “I’ve got nothing to do with it.”.
At one point, White joined Colbert for a Monroe-style hot dog tasting. The scene turned into a full-blown bit as the two sampled the local version, with White describing it, dryly, as “Lady and the Tramp-style,” while the camera crew cracked up off-camera.
Music became another pressure-release valve. Colbert delivered a helium-addled rendition of The White Stripes’ “Fell in Love With a Girl,” as White struggled not to laugh.
The broadcast ended with the kind of silly flourish that made the whole thing feel deliberate in its messiness. Colbert gifted the show’s creative director, Genevieve Benson, a ham topped with a birthday hat and a lit sparkler.
And for all the awkward, hilarious momentum of the night, the emotional center wasn’t about politics at all. Colbert left it plain—while the president of the United States “seethes” over him. Colbert intended to take the sudden freedom that came with his TV exit and use it immediately: not to analyze the moment. but to enjoy it.
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