Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty
On May 1, 2023, Stephen Colbert returned to The Late Show stage after a week-long vacation to excitedly deliver the belated news that Tucker Carlson had also been off the air for a week. “The difference is: I’m allowed back on,” Colbert joked of the then only recently fired Fox News host. However, Colbert’s glee was short-lived.
Less than 30 minutes later, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) announced that its members would be striking for the first time in 15 years, leading late-night television—and essentially all of scripted entertainment—to go dark, and stay dark, for nearly five months. Some media critics viewed the strike as a potential death knell for late-night, and even some writers weren’t sure what the future might hold for the format.
“When you go off the air for five months, you just don’t know what it’s going to be like when you come back,” Sal Gentile, the writer behind Late Night with Seth Meyers’ “A Closer Look” segments, tells The Daily Beast. “As galvanized and inspired as we all were, [the strike] was very hard. It was very kind to hear everybody say how much they missed ‘A Closer Look,’ and it was very gratifying when we came back to see that that was the case… and for that connection to still be there.”