Jeffrey R. Staab/CBS(NEW YORK) — Next month, David Letterman will host his final installment of the CBS Late Show. While the broadcast is still three weeks away, he already has a plan for what to say.
“I know of other things that are being worked on. My only concern is mine. What will I do? And I now know exactly what I will do,” he told The New York Times. “And I want it to be upbeat, and I want it to be funny, and I want people to be happy that they spent the time to watch it.”
Letterman, 68, has been hosting the show since 1993. Prior to that, he hosted NBC Late Night show in the time slot following Johnny Carson, whose farewell to TV still stands out in his mind.
“That was fantastic. I can remember when he signed off that night, it just left you [with] a nagging sense of loss,” he said. “This doesn’t apply here. I want it to be a little more cheery. …Of course, Johnny’s last show was historic. This one won’t be. This one, people will say: ‘Ah, there you go. When’s the new guy starting?'”
The new guy, of course, is Stephen Colbert, who is set to start hosting later this year. Letterman had no say in that decision, he told the newspaper.
“I always thought Jon Stewart would have been a good choice. And then Stephen. And then I thought, well, maybe this will be a good opportunity to put a black person on, and it would be a good opportunity to put a woman on. Because there are certainly a lot of very funny women that have television shows everywhere,” he said. “So that would have made sense to me, as well.”
Still, while he admitted he was bothered a bit that he wasn’t consulted, he’s since accepted it. He also thinks Colbert was a good pick.
“If you’re running the show with Jimmy Fallon, that’s a certain dynamic. Jimmy Kimmel, a completely different dynamic. And now Stephen Colbert will add a third, different dynamic to it,” he said. “I think it will be very interesting to see what he will do.”
The final broadcast of the Late Show with David Letterman is May 20.
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