Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel Prep Quick Returns After Writers Strike Settlement

27 September, 2023

Get ready for a bumper car of monologue jokes about how they spent their summer. The four hosts of the major networks’ late-night talk shows will all be back in the saddle on Monday (Oct. 2) following the resolution this week of the 146-day strike by Hollywood writers.

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NBC announced in a statement that The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (11:35 p.m. ET) and Late Night with Seth Meyers (12:35 a.m. ET) will be back in their usual time slots next week for the first time since the Writers Guild of America went out on strike on May 2.

The Hollywood Reporter added that ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! and CBS’ The Late Show With Stephen Colbert will also be back on Oct. 2 and that HBO’s Last Week Tonight With John Oliver will beat them by 24 hours and return on Sunday night (Oct. 1).

The news is welcome for the Voltron-like group of talkers who banded together last month to launch the Strike Force 5 podcast to raise funds for their out-of-work staff members. In a tweet on Wednesday, the Strike Force (thunder sound effect) dubbed their “mission complete,” adding, “the founding members of Strike Force 5 will return to their network television shows this Monday 10/2. And one of them to premium cable on 10/1.”

After announcing plans to bring back his HBO show Real Time With Bill Maher last week in the midst of the strike — then pulling back those plans amid backlash, and saying that the backtrack move came as the two sides resumed negotiations — Maher announced on X (formerly Twitter) that his writers planned to return to work on Wednesday (Sept. 27), with the first show back slated for Friday night (Sept. 29).

The Writers Guild of America voted on Tuesday to end the summer-long strike after reaching a tentative agreement with Hollywood studios, with the guild’s 11,500 members now cleared to immediately return to work; a deal has not yet been reached with the SAG-AFTRA actors union, which will make it difficult for actors and other SAG members to talk up their upcoming projects on the late night shows.

See tweets from the hosts below.

Billboard

Billboard